On March 14, the City Council granted (5-0) Lowe’s Enterprise’s request to develop and construct a mixed-use urban project. It will be adjacent to the Culver City Metro Expo Line on land now occupied by 586 parking spaces.
Five acres of city-owned property will become residential, office, retail and hotel properties, plus 300 parking stalls for the Metro Line. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the business community.
But what about the residents who live around this development, residents who need to park their cars to use the Metro, the traffic that it will undoubtedly increase, and the pollution it will cause?
Why do so few residents know about this development?
Users of the Metro know that if you do not arrive before 9 a.m. Monday through Friday, you will be out of luck.
What will happen when 600 cars are competing for 300 spaces?
The Chamber of Commerce has its fingerprints all over this bad deal. This Council is too cozy with business interests, too dismissive of residents’ concerns.
For the City Council election on April we all need to participate in the political process.
Do you want the Chamber of Commerce to continue to control your city?
Or do you want residents to get a fair and unbiased hearing before the City Council?
There are plenty of progressive candidates to choose from this election. Need I say more?
Ms. Greenberg, a 41-year resident of Culver City, may be contacted at plgreen@att.net
It certainly helps to understand the TOD – transit oriented development — near the CC Expo Light Rail Station, in its totality.
How about this? http://urbanize.la/post/latest-culver-city-tod-revealed The article makes this note: “Parking for residents, office users and commercial tenants the low-rise development would be provided in an on-site parking structure. The garage, which would feature an at-grade level and three underground levels, could accommodate up to 345 vehicles – substantially more than what is required by code.” Hmm … There is also the La Cienega Expo Light Rail station just down the road from the Culver City station, with a large parking garage that hold more than 500 cars.
The fact of the matter is that some of the development in downtown CC would have already been completed and online were it not for the dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency. This one act alone, plus the years of legal and financial wrangling between the City and the State that followed, served to not only elongate the time frame for some of these projects, but it also caused some of them to be developed at the same time.
I live in Blair Hills. My son, who was born in 1992, says he can’t remember a time when there wasn’t some kind of construction going on within a few miles radius of our home. This is true. Some of it has been heretofore delayed maintenance, and some are redevelopment type projects.
My perspective on it is this. While it can sometimes be a pain while all this activity is underway, we should be heartened by the fact that our government and the private sector, sometimes solo and sometimes in concert, actually has the funding available to do these projects. Yes, it takes some effort to keep track of all that’s going on and contacting your local elected officials to voice your concerns, or even a better idea. But that’s what it’s all about to be a member of such a vibrant community.
Reading this article in the LA Times will give you a clearer picture of why Redevelopment Agencies were dissolved.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/03/local/me-redevelop-housing-20101003
According to their analysis – ” At least 120 municipalities — nearly one in three with active redevelopment agencies — spent a combined $700 million in housing funds from 2000 to 2008 without constructing a single new unit, the newspaper’s analysis of state data shows. Nor did most of them add to the housing stock by rehabilitating existing units.”
And if you look at their data base, you will see that our City was one of the worst offenders. While California law required that agencies set aside 1/5 of their revenue towards affordable housing, Culver City, with a total of of over $33 million in spending between 2000-2001 and 2007-08 built no units.
http://projects.latimes.com/redevelopment/
It is true that Meghan Sahli-Wells is courageous. But it is astonishing that it takes courage to really support affordable housing in Culver City, when the problem of affordability is not simply for low income families. This from a report that the City reviewed on Monday:
The differential between affordable rent and current average rent is between $897-$1,625, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR A LOW OR MODERATE INCOME HOUSEHOLD TO RENT AT AN AFFORDABLE RATE IN CULVER CITY
I agree that it was egregious to have spent 33M and created no new low or moderate income housing and I applaud Meghan for being in the forefront of the effort to change that situation. But I would add that several mixed use projects which did include affordable units were floated during that period (I was involved in community input to the one at Washington Blvd. and Centinela Ave that never got off the drawing board) and one of the main reasons they never made it past that stage was the resistance of nearby residents! NIMBYism was a collateral cause for these abandoned projects as well as mismanagement by certain staff at City Hall. Even the current Habitat for Humanity project that launched yesterday on Globe Ave, was vigorously opposed by the residents on Globe Ave.
Crystal, do you feel you understand the TOD in its entirety?
Good point, Judy. We need to form an YIMBY movement, that helps others understand that building affordable housing is a good thing for a community.
To be frank, I have not studied all available information yet on the various TOD (transit oriented development) projects (both in and out of Culver City … I actually live closer to the LA planned monstrosity on La Cienega, the Cumulus project) Unless one is a transportation/urban planner working for CC, one can’t easily claim any understanding in depth. However, I did work in transportation finance for Culver City, and my office was right next to the professional who is that point person for CC. We chatted often. The planning process for those TODs was well underway before the Expo Line to Culver City was even opened, and part of the work program for the Transportation Department.1
There’s a saying that hindsight is 20/20. Had past City Councils known that the State of California was going to dissolve Redevelopment Agencies, different decisions on the spend down priorities for the funds might have been made. The City chose to subsidize rents instead. Money was spent in this fashion to try and make housing more affordable.
No one saw that dissolution coming in time to make any meaningful adjustments. Sad but true, sometimes these things happen when you’re at the end of the government “food chain” as local government is.
And now, let’s move forward.
Thanks Crystal. Regarding the TOD, the City did not even understand what they were approving when deeming the area a TOD and maximizing density in the process. They did not perform a cumulative environmental review or develop a master plan to analyze the effect of all the TOD projects, prior to making the changes.
We are only now beginning to understand the effects.
Thankfully, our City Council directed Staff to come up with a plan to perform a cumulative review of the area and actively involve the community, with hopes that this be completed prior to any more approvals in the TOD. This will be an Agenda item at the very first Council Meeting in May.
We are also thankful to have a tremendous group of people running for City Council who understand the concerns of our neighborhoods and will stand up for us all when sitting upon the dais.
Megan wasn’t always at the forefront of affordable housing. When she moved into her grandmother’s home she became part of a NIMBY group trying to scuttle the affordable complex being built on her street. Many of us older generation activists saw first hand how she used that entree to her advantage. She was not at the first Globe housing meetings either. It was only when she became the “CEO” of her neighborhood group that she started her career with the help of Gary Silberger, who was termed out. No matter how easy it is to promote affordable housing these days, many of us are not forgetting how she got her start – as a NIMBY. People can change their minds and mature with time, but should not gloss over or rewrite their past. An older generation that remembers when Culver City was not a destination, but it was a family community affordable to all know different.
Such an interesting logic. If past Culver City Councils had known that their actions (not following State law) would cause the dissolution of the agencies, they would have acted differently (responsibly?).
Yes, Ken. It seems we need the kind of leadership that understands our community needs a balance between housing and economic development. And who is committed to following State law, if we are ever going to be trusted with state development funds.