To demonstrate how hungry long-suffering residents of West Culver City are for more promises of gentrification, 10 persons, including the owners of five businesses, came to City Hall last night to cheer the latest plan.
It is a rare Monday evening when 10 residents speak out on any subject short of a fire-engine emergency.
They were encouraged by a still-gauzy Redevelopment Agency plan to put a pretty dress on two abbreviated stretches of Washington Boulevard, west of Centinela.
A View of Main Thoroughfare
“Washington Boulevard is long and cold,” said one West resident, Robert Pine of Colonial Avenue.
He said he “is very excited that the Redevelopment Agency is considering this plan.”
A vision of landscaped medians and improved street lighting caught the attention of most neighbors. City officials meanwhile spoke glowingly of the proposed installation of metered parking, which could fetch $16,000 a year for city coffers.
Seven components make up the not-so-colorfully named Area Improvement Plan that is intended to gentrify the neighborhood:
1. Redevelopment and Code Enforcement — Under-performing properties will be targeted.
2. Public Improvements — This generic label will cover the neighbor-friendly landscape medians, an example of a plan City Hall describes as “low cost” but with “a high visual impact.”
3. Parking Improvements — Chafing over the plethora of aging under-parked buildings and scarcity of public parking, here is where the grand parking meter installation strategy kicks in.
4. Commercial Rehabilitation — Cleaning up dreary facades and poor signage of existing businesses.
5. Business Attraction — The purpose of the Community Development Dept.’s new Business Resource Center is to lure new entrepreneurs to the neighborhood.
6. Land Use Planning — The six-year-old West Washington Revitalization Plan will be revised and updated, and a list of “planning problems and opportunities” will be developed.
7. Lighting and Landscape — This is where the larger plan gets tough and cloudy. Redevelopment Agency Chair Scott Malsin admonished the business owners in the audience to do more than cheer if the Area Improvement Plan is to succeed. City Hall is committed to providing the initial impetus while urging regional businesses to shoulder responsibility by organizing and forming an assessment district the way Downtown entrepreneurs have.
Even if events seem to be happening in slow motion, the West Culver City neighborhood is eager for even a glimmer of encouragement.
Neighbors have been patiently waiting for almost seven years for the city to deliver on even tiny pledges, most notably at the corner of Washington and Centinela where Christmas trees presently are being bartered.
The Redevelopment Agency’s charge last night was to immerse itself in a theoretical and philosophical discussion to refine nice sounding improvements, which Community Development Dept. Director Sol Blumenfeld outlined. City Hall’s stated objective “is to more quickly help turn around West Washington Boulevard.”
Taking Shape
Spotlighting the city’s main interests, Mr. Blumenfeld said that “the idea is to look at a series of improvements, like public parking and commercial rehabilitation.”
When City Hall looks at West Washington, it sees “underdeveloped properties, auto service uses and the lack of pedestrian-serving retail businesses,” exactly the image Culver City has been aggressively trying to shed.
Within recent times, said Mr. Blumenfeld, the Redevelopment Agency has spent more than $14 million acquiring the two Washington-Centinela northerly corners and what is colloquially known as the Baldwin Motel site, farther west, adjacent to the Costco complex.
Coming Attractions
Project Manager Joe Susca of the Community Development Dept. said that four bids are in for developing two of West Culver’s most nagging blight spots — the northwest and the northeast corners of Washington and Centinela. Nine months have passed since City Hall’s latest fiasco with the Woo brothers, whose family owned the northwest corner for 13 years and allowed it to go to seed.
After initially attracting 11 bidders for the double corner, and successively winnowing the field to six and then the present number, Mr. Susca hopes to put the matter on an early January agenda for the Redevelopment Agency.
What will the corners look like? “Depends on which developer is chosen,” Mr. Susca said. “Some are mixed-use, some are all commercial.”
