Culver City Pressed to Rethink Plans for Mall

Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter called on Culver City officials Friday to abandon or drastically scale back plans for a proposed regional shopping mall near Marina del Rey that she said would transform nearby Los Angeles neighborhoods “into a nightmare of gridlock.”

Galanter accused Culver City of dumping parking and traffic problems from the proposed 823,000-square-foot Marina Place development on Los Angeles residents. The mall would be built on 18 acres at the western tip of Culver City that is bordered on three sides by Los Angeles.

Past Complaints

In the past, Culver City officials have complained bitterly about huge residential and commercial projects in Los Angeles that create traffic and parking problems in their city--particularly the Howard Hughes Center in Westchester and the proposed $1-billion Playa Vista development.

The two cities are also at odds over a proposed movie theater complex in the Los Angeles community of Palms that Culver City officials say will worsen their parking problems.

“I don’t see the value of having a war between the cities,” Galanter said at a City Hall press conference.

Galanter introduced a motion at Friday’s City Council meeting calling on the city attorney’s office and the Transportation and Planning departments to meet with Culver City officials and the developer, Prudential Insurance Co. of America, to “replan” the shopping mall.

Galanter said she would prefer scrapping plans for the mall in favor of a residential development. Barring that, she said, the mall should be cut back in size.

“I don’t want to see us in a position of having to swallow a project whose impacts we cannot accommodate or absorb,” she said. “We will be evaluating what local streets can take, and working back from that, how big a project would be allowed.”

Galanter said she expects Culver City officials to cooperate with her, but she acknowledged that her motion was designed in part to set the groundwork for a possible lawsuit.

Street Widenings

The city of Los Angeles has no jurisdiction over the proposed shopping mall, but several of the project’s “traffic mitigation” measures call for street widenings and other changes in the city of Los Angeles. Los Angeles transportation officials who revived an environmental impact report on the project concluded that it underestimates peak-hour traffic by as much as 30%, Galanter said.

The Culver City Planning Commission approved the shopping mall in May, and the Culver City City Council is scheduled to consider it July 11. Last year, the City Council rejected a 1.4-million-square-foot shopping, office and residential complex for the site, ordering Prudential to reduce the density by 40%. The shopping mall is Prudential’s fifth proposal since 1980 when it bought the former site of a Hughes Helicopter factory.

Culver City Associate Planner Carol DeLay said one of the proposed conditions for the new project would require Prudential “to make all reasonable attempts” to address the city of Los Angeles’ concerns.

“It is in the best interest of everybody to cooperate given the impacts cross over boundaries,” said DeLay, who handles the project.