Required Report Slowing Playa Development

Stacked more than 3 feet high on a conference table, the 23 volumes of Playa Vista’s most recent environmental report resemble a miniature Tower of Pisa. Like that leaning landmark, they are eliciting a great deal of commentary.

The draft environmental impact report for the second phase of the long-debated Playa Vista development has generated hundreds of questions or comments from activists, environmentalists and organizations. They demand to know how the densely packed housing and commercial development will affect air quality, water quality, Native American remains and gridlock.

For large developments, producing the required EIR is an often arduous process, and the document becomes yet another occasion for opponents and supporters to face off. By law, the city must respond to each request for clarification or information, a task that is likely to take months.

The city planners assigned to compose the responses can be forgiven if they experience a sense of deja vu. Although there undoubtedly are some never-before-seen queries amid the 270 sets of questions submitted, many have been aired repeatedly over the more than two decades that Playa Vista has been in the works.

The commentaries range from breezy endorsement letters (“I am writing to you in support ... “) to sober 57-page treatises seeking information on dozens of points, from toxic gases to water tables to housing prices to runoff treatment. Some are understandable only to those people -- and there are many -- who have studied the issue for years.

“What ever became,” one wetlands activist wants to know, “of the burrowing owls that were once observed on the project site?”

Advocates and opponents alike are clearly determined to have their say as Playa Vista developers plan what they call the Village, the second and final phase of the contentious Westside project, sandwiched between Marina del Rey and Westchester. The responses to the questions will be contained in the final environmental impact report, on which the city will hold a series of public hearings, said Meredith T. Elguira, a city planning associate.

Playa Vista executives, in fact, contend that most of the issues have been addressed in the Phase 1 report, which the City Council approved in 1993, and in more than a dozen court battles that have been dismissed or decided in Playa Vista’s favor. Project opponents, they say, are using the EIR process to erect as many obstacles to the next phase as possible.

“This is the most thorough environmental analysis that I believe has ever been done in Los Angeles for this size project,” contended Doug Moreland, senior vice president for Playa Vista.

Still, opponents have identified myriad points they say have gone unaddressed -- despite the thousands of pages of environmental analysis and technical appendixes.

In particular, comments abound on what activists say is insufficient information about the “cumulative effects” of Playa Vista and scores of other nearby projects large and small that are underway or planned.

For example, the massive UCLA hospital being built to replace the earthquake-damaged medical center on the Westwood campus does not figure into the report. Moreland said it was outside the area that consultants studied for the Phase 2 report.

Playa Vista executives have said the 111-acre Phase 2 section would help provide a balanced mix of housing, retail space, offices and open areas.

Described by Moreland as the heart of Playa Vista, the Village is designed to serve as a bridge between the residential areas being built just to the west and a planned commercial campus on the east that was approved as part of the first phase but has not yet attracted any takers.

Plans call for 2,600 housing units in the Village, ranging from the low $200,000s to more than $1 million.

Also planned are 175,000 square feet of offices and 40,000 square feet of restaurants and other community services, with nearly 12 acres to be restored as stream and bluff habitat.

Throwing up roadblocks to such large projects is a time-honored tradition in the widely heralded but often messy environmental review process.

“The EIR process has, unfortunately, become a process that gets used to gum the process up in order to slow development in a lot of cases,” said Stephanie Pincetl, a visiting professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment. “Depending on where you stand on the development, it can be good or bad.

“The idea behind an EIR is a very good one,” she added. “In a democracy, efficiency isn’t the goal. The goal is really public participation. With that comes both the sublime and the ridiculous.”

Environmental impact reports became a fixture of the governmental landscape in 1970, when Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act.

Most observers agree that the law’s greatest benefit is its public disclosure of potential consequences of government agencies’ development decisions. Advocates maintain that the environmental impact report process stops bad projects and improves mediocre ones. Critics say it stymies even worthwhile development.

But assessing whether a project is worthwhile, development critics say, can become especially tricky if the development, like Playa Vista, is built in phases. How can the effects of a later phase be judged if the initial phase is still underway? The Mar Vista Community Council made that point about Playa Vista and traffic.

“Phase 2 assumes that the Phase 1 impacts have all taken place,” said Tom Ponton, the council’s chairman. “What they’re hiding is that the true impacts of Phase 1 have not been felt by the community and therefore Phase 2 doesn’t seem so bad.”

Another feature of EIRs is the clashing of views, and the study for Playa Vista has plenty of examples.

The Mar Vista group complained that taller buildings in the Village would obscure views of the Westchester Bluffs and the Loyola Marymount University sign, “a source of identity and pride.”

The draft report, prepared by the city Planning Department and consultants, acknowledged that there would be “irreversible changes,” including the loss of bluff views along Jefferson Boulevard. But it said the completion of a road near the base of the bluffs -- Bluff Creek Drive -- would provide “a new public view corridor.”

Heal the Bay, a nonprofit group focused on cleaning up Santa Monica Bay, requested more details on Playa Vista’s plans to develop a “riparian corridor,” a stream habitat to help control flooding and serve as a haven for birds and other creatures.

Moreland said many Heal the Bay questions had been addressed by a December report on water quality in the freshwater marsh, which Playa Vista opened in April to treat runoff and to serve as habitat. The draft report was released in August, months before those monitoring data were available.

Moreland doesn’t pretend to believe that the city’s responses will satisfy all of the opponents’ concerns. More lawsuits, he said, were inevitable.