Pinning down precision was elusive at last night’s summoning of the Downtown faithful to a public workshop at City Hall to compare and debate the amorphous future vs. the amorphous past of the dazzling Downtown plot known, drearily, as Parcel B.
For two hours in the rectangular Patacchia Room, they shmoozed, Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld and an overflow crowd of 50 Downtown-types or wannabes — that is, residents and developers.
At the outset, Mr. Blumenfeld said the ostensible purpose was to solicit questions —clarity, brevity and pragmatism were not mandatory — that veteran staffer Joe Susca would compile. At a future unknown date, Mr. Blumenfeld would file them with their City Council for their perusal. At a further future unknown date, the Council would publicly consider the best and brightest of those ideas. At an even further future unknown date, City Hall would solicit requests-for-proposal, sift through them, and perhaps by the time today’s children are adults, a developer will be selected.
Settle in. This Could Take Years.
If he is as inept as the last few developers, the yawning space known to some as Center Field still will be a parking lot even after rockets replace automobiles as the most common mode of Westside transportation.
Turning to former City Councilman Steve Rose, a maven on Culver City history, Mr. Blumenfeld asked how long some mutation of Parcel B has been living on hometown drawing boards, and Mr. Rose said: When all of us were 30 years younger. At least, cracked Mr. Blumenfeld, no one can accuse us of making snap judgments.
It was not necessarily anyone’s fault that nothing was settled and even less was clarified — that is bound to happen when you gather four dozen of the strongest-willed denizens in town, armed with their competing visions and a full stomach, lock them into a well-lighted confined space for 120 minutes, and tell them they are limited to two options:
• To filibuster at length about the once-grandiose building that never was built in the inviting space between the Culver Hotel and Trader Joes, or
• To vamp even longer about their architectural visions for the medium, the distant or the long-after-we’re-outta-here future.
The Final Score Was What?
Despite the unwieldy tools he was saddled with, Mr. Blumenfeld runs a tidy meeting. Three years into his Culver City appointment and no slave to latter-day tonsorial fashion, the not only congenial but brilliant Mr. Blumenfeld is one of those bi-popular fellows directly traceable to his bi-lingualism. Wonkish to his toes, he can lead a convention of urban planners and outfitters, speaking only their arcane language without ever veering out of bounds.
As he re-proved last night, when handed an audience of relatively normal people, he will lead with enviable clarity and succinctness, never coming close to tumbling into a wonkish ditch.
He said that a mixed-use building “is not on the menu.” To spark his listeners, Mr. Blumenfeld sought to ignite their creative minds with this prompting: “What do you want to see there? Do you want a building that reflects the Culver Hotel or juxtaposes it? a stumper that at least one audience member still is pondering.
A selection of audience comments:
• Meghan Sahli-Wells: “It doesn’t seem to me office space (the last developer’s central theme) is the best use of the space.”
• Margaret Lindgren: “I want to see more green space, and for the small retail you are talking about, I would like a bookstore and a stationery store.”
• Michelle Weiner: It should be the most important building in Culver City.
• Other speakers: What is the difference between open space and green space?
• Is there a possibility of creating green space on the roof of the building?
• The clearly missing ingredient in Downtown is shopping. Balance is needed.
• I hope there will be a design competition.
• Whatever the building turns out to be, it should be a destination.
Unfortunately, somebody forgot to mail invitations to the Shrinking Violets Club. Not one bashful occupant was found. Everyone in the room brought a bulging satchel of ideas into the meeting. Worse, or further, each person seemed prepared to remain stolidly in place until his or her next haircut or beauty salon appointment.
To spice the garden salad of ideas with yet another stricture, Mr. Blumenfeld said that regardless of the capital ideas each person carried in his heart, the conformation of the next unbuilt building at Parcel B would need to fairly closely match the outline of the last unbuilt building.
Otherwise, said Mr. Blumenfeld with an admirably straight face, “it could add years to the project.”
