Slow-Growth Group at Odds With Santa Monica Officials

Duke Kelso probably could not mince words if he tried. And lately he has not been trying. The 37-year-old activist, who draws inspiration from Frank Capra movies, is one of the leaders of a controversial new organization that is seeking to drastically cut the pace of major development in Santa Monica.

Kelso and other members of the unnamed group, who have taken their cue from leaders of the slow-growth movement in Los Angeles, say officials have ignored chronic traffic and parking problems in the beach community. A petition distributed by the group and signed by about 500 people so far calls for the postponement of all major development projects until a new traffic study is completed.

“We mean business,” Kelso said. “The council is allowing the quality of life to go down the toilet. They ought to all crawl under one big rock.”

That goes double for Mayor James P. Conn, as far as Kelso is concerned. The mayor infuriated Kelso’s group when he recently said that traffic gridlock in Santa Monica is inevitable. Conn later said that he was referring to the fact that Santa Monica cannot control growth beyond its borders. But Kelso didn’t buy the mayor’s story.

“Yeah,” Kelso said. “We’re after him.”

Kelso’s angry rhetoric, expressed mostly at public forums and in the press, has stunned City Hall. After all, he is talking about Santa Monica--a city that boasts one of the nation’s toughest rent control laws; a city that once enacted a building moratorium; a city with fairly restrictive growth guidelines; a city still known as the “Peoples’ Republic of Santa Monica” in some quarters.

“Everything the council has been doing is the right thing to do,” Conn said. “We have scaled back development in this city and we were the first in the Los Angeles Basin to do that . . . . We have gone as far as anyone.”

Councilman Dennis Zane was one of the architects of the city’s development strategy and coined the phrase “Santa Monica is not the pot of gold at the end of Wilshire Boulevard” to describe his distaste for the massive growth going on in Los Angeles. He acknowledged that Santa Monica has experienced traffic and parking problems, but said he is perplexed by the sudden emergence of Kelso’s group.

“We have been in the vanguard of the slow-growth movement for almost seven years,” said Zane, a leader of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights. “Santa Monica has avoided the high-rise assault. We have reduced densities. . . . But some citizens say we should have gone further.”

Officials have also expressed concern about Kelso’s tactics. Zane accused Kelso of “playing fast and loose with the facts.” Councilwoman Christine E. Reed, who along with Zane attended a community meeting chaired by Kelso, said she was astonished by the amount of erroneous information he released.

‘Inaccurate’ Comments

“Kelso may be uninformed or in some calculated way he may be misstating the facts to get people aroused,” Reed said. “Because much of what he said was inaccurate. . . . It was frustrating to listen to so much misinformation.”

Kelso, a private building contractor who lives near Santa Monica College, has denied that he is purposely misleading people. He said his true goal is to focus public attention on the issue, not himself.

He claims to harbor no political ambitions and refused to even pose for a newspaper photographer. But his sweeping indictments of the City Council and his highly quotable speaking style--he usually alerts a reporter when he thinks he is about to say something interesting--have put him in the spotlight .

“I have asked the big questions and I’ve either had my toes stepped on or been ridiculed,” said Kelso, who frequently supports his statements by citing Santa Monica’s arcane land-use policy codes. “It’s not that I am looking for trouble. I don’t need this, frankly. And if people don’t react to it I will drop it.”

Kelso, however, is obviously convinced that others are fed up. He points to chronic rush-hour tie-ups on the Cloverfield Boulevard freeway ramps, increasing automobile traffic in once-quiet neighborhoods and the ever-present sight of the steel skeletons of rising commercial buildings as evidence that the community is headed for severe problems.

Residents Concerned

Regula K. Ziegler, a Kelso supporter, said residents are just beginning to wake up to the threat posed by area-wide development. In the past, Ziegler said, people only worried about projects in their neighborhoods, but they now realize that developments located miles away affect their communities.

“The people we talked to were not aware of what was being approved,” Ziegler said. “The community has not been notified of these developments.”

Leaders of Santa Monica’s established community groups so far have been keeping their distance from Kelso and Ziegler, and some are critical of their style. But they concede that development is the subject of rising concern.

“Some people would like to see a citywide ballot next year calling for more controls on future commercial development,” said Julie Lopez Dad, a leader of the Ocean Park Community Organization. “The City Council is not taking effective action. It’s only looking at things in a piecemeal way.”

“There seems to be an increasing awareness about development and the ensuing traffic and parking problems,” added Paul Rosenstein of the Santa Monica Mid-City Neighbors organization. “But I don’t sense that there’s any outrage. We may not be happy with everything that happens in this city, but we haven’t given up yet on the existing City Council and Planning Commission.”

One development project that particularly concerns residents is Playa Vista, a huge office and residential complex that will be built just south of the city. To the north, there is concern about commercial growth in Malibu.

Colorado Place

In Santa Monica, Phase 3 of Colorado Place, more than 1 million square feet in size, is scheduled for final consideration. The city is also set to award development contracts for an office park on land next to Santa Monica Airport and a hotel on the site of the Sand and Sea Club.

In conjunction with these projects, City Manager John Jalili said officials have set aside $300,000 for a study on the relationship between traffic and development. The study will be conducted by a private consulting firm and should be completed by the end of this year or early next year.

The city’s last traffic study, conducted more than 10 years ago, cited such continuing problems as congestion on the freeway exits for Lincoln and Cloverfield boulevards. The report also warned of insufficient parking in densely populated neighborhoods and residential areas surrounding Santa Monica College and the two major hospitals. Traffic analysts predicted that the numbers of cars traveling through the city would continue to climb by about 3% a year and recommended aggressive traffic management policies.

Kelso said the traffic study points to serious problems that need to be examined, and added that the council should temporarily postpone action on any development proposal bigger than 40,000-square-feet until the new traffic study is completed. “The council members obviously don’t know what they are talking about now,” Kelso said. “They are speaking with forked tongues.”

Developers, however, contend that Santa Monica has more than enough growth restrictions already. Jerry Snyder hopes to construct a 1.5-million-square-foot office complex called the Water Garden on 17 acres bounded by Olympic Boulevard, 26th Street, and Cloverfield and Colorado boulevards.

“I don’t have to protect the politicians, but I think they are taking a lot of undue heat,” Snyder said. “Santa Monica is not easy on anybody.”

Agreement With City

Southmark Pacific Corp., the company building the Colorado Place project, has already gone to court over a legal dispute with the city. Senior Vice President Robbie Monsma said Southmark will not permit any further delays. She noted that the company has agreed to pay for such things as traffic mitigation, day care and even $250,000 worth of public artwork.

“We have already done more than is legally required,” Monsma said bitterly. “We have pretty much given the city everything they asked for.”

With the slow-growth movement gaining momentum--underscored by slow-growth advocate Ruth Galanter’s defeat of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Pat Russell--officials have become extremely sensitive to the political ramifications of even appearing to be pro-development.

Reed said the city, which is still working on the zoning ordinances that will accompany its land-use plan, should always be willing to reassess its positions. Zane said residents should know that Santa Monica officials are tough on developers and that they do not rubber-stamp anything.

“Mr. Kelso may have identified a real issue” Zane said. “But we are already onto it.”

Kelso, however, continues to insist that the city has not done enough. Taking inspiration from the heroes of such Frank Capra movies as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and sounding like Lt. Col. Oliver North, Kelso said he has just begun to fight.

“This is America,” Kelso said. “It’s one man and one vote. If our representatives don’t act accordingly, we have to get involved.”