Culver City is ignoring the elephant in the room. At last Monday’s City Council meeting, the elephant was pointed out and all but one of the four Council members in the room looked the other way.
If you visit the Downtown neighborhood on any weekday morning, you cannot miss the usual sights: Parents driving their children to school, and then trying to find parking. After quickly filling up the entire available street parking, parents use the former Culver City parking lot at 4043 Irving Pl.
Employees of Downtown are also getting their free parking spot on the lot, to park all day.
Anyone who is even half paying attention can observe this. The condo & office developer, the city sold the land to, in a very smart move has not secured this property for nearly two years. Doing so would show the obvious impact that losing the public parking lot would cause to the neighborhood and Downtown. Anyone who is half paying attention knows this.
In the evening employees and patrons get free parking by filling the Irving Place lot and neighborhood streets.
The night ends with employees and customers wandering into the neighborhood — and the 4043 Irving Pl. parking lot.
Some are trying to find their cars past 2 a.m. Some even urinate on trees and walls along the way, treating Irving Place like a back alley. Anyone who is half paying attention can observe this.
The parking lot is full of trash. The four huge flowerpots in the parking lot are used as trashcans but mostly the trash is just lying on the ground… from mattresses to shopping carts.
The trash is lying in the neighborhood streets.
The developer promised at last Monday’s City Council meeting that the lot would be cleaned up. They promised to “get it cleaned up immediately.” Four days later, it had not been cleaned up.
A blighted, unsupervised parking lot would be a good excuse to build a four-story mega condo/office complex to remove the developers’ allowed blight. Anyone who is half paying attention can observe this.
Culver City has ignored the steady flow of traffic parking in our neighborhood. They know it is happening.
When the lot closes permanently, displaced vehicles will park deeper into our neighborhood, treating our neighborhood like a back alley. Anyone who is half paying attention knows this.
Culver City is commissioning a study this year of how parking is being used and managed downtown, at a cost of $50,000 to $90,000.
At last Monday’s City Council meeting, the city refused to make the developers, of the proposed 26-condo and 3-office project, close and secure the free, trash-filled parking lot. Theoretic traffic studies do not address “real life” parking issues.
The city calls the current condition “transient parking.” Doing so, they think that they don’t have to study or count the number of vehicles that use the lot on a daily basis.
Doing so, they don’t have to document who is parking on the lot. Why spend $50,000 to $90,000 for a study and not a factor in the real world closure of the 4043 Irving Pl. lot?
Anyone who is half paying attention can see this makes no sense.
Council member Christopher Armenta was the only one interested in closing the lot to study its closer impact.
He was quickly told by Sol Blumenfeld, the Community Development Director, that he had talked to the Redevelopment Administrator, and “… he indicates that a couple of uses are… have been… a couple of businesses and a couple of institutions have been using parking, and I’m not sure of the outcome if it was immediately closed off but that what that would mean to those businesses and institutions.”
Translation: They know who is parking on the lot (businesses and institutions), but want to ignore the impact of the lot closing (businesses and institutions parking in the residential neighborhood) when the developers build their project.
So it is no surprise that Culver City is a finalist in the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.’s contest for Most Business-Friendly City Under 50,000 Population. I wonder where Culver City rates for Resident-Friendly. If the Culver City Downtown Neighborhood Assn. rated them, it would probably be poor.
Culver City Hall sees the elephant in the room but they to refuses to acknowledge it exists. This is not due diligence nor is this culpable deniability. The word malfeasance comes to mind. Anyone who is half paying attention knows this.
What is the common thread that ties a post office, public radio, veterinary hospital, public park, TV studio and the Downtown Neighborhood Assn. together?
As someone who is paying attention… that is a topic for next time.
Mr. Anderson may be contacted at
CaryAnderson@ca.rr.com and
http://www.CulverCityDNA.org
