Santa Monica Mayor Wants Airport Vote

Santa Monica Mayor Dennis Zane said Friday he will recommend that the City Council next week rescind its approval of a controversial 822,000-square-foot commercial office project proposed for Santa Monica Municipal Airport.

Zane said he will try, instead, to garner community support for a 580,000-square-foot office project that would set aside more than 20 acres of the 37.5-acre site on the city’s eastern border for recreational facilities. Zane said he would like to see his new proposal placed on the November municipal election ballot.

“The community interest is best served by a ballot measure,” said Zane. “The burden of compromise is to find a place where people who disagreed with me agree with me. I am willing to set aside my initial judgment and find a common judgment.”

Zane was the project’s staunchest supporter because of the millions of dollars in revenues it would generate.

He ran into strong opposition from neighborhood groups and from Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who three weeks ago denounced the project as “environmentally insensitive.” Earlier, Los Angeles Councilman Marvin Braude and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose districts abut Santa Monica, also said they opposed the project.

Although the project would be built entirely within Santa Monica, access to it would be from Bundy Drive in Los Angeles. A group of Los Angeles residents filed suit Jan. 2 challenging the adequacy of the environmental impact report.

At a private meeting Thursday with city officials from both Santa Monica and Los Angeles--including both Zane and Bradley--Los Angeles traffic engineers agreed to study the impact of Zane’s new proposal. Bradley had said earlier that the project might be acceptable if 200,000 square feet were removed.

In October, the council voted 4 to 3 to approve the larger 822,000-square-foot project, which had been reduced from its original 1987 size of 1.3 million square feet. A month later, a citizens’ committee collected nearly 8,000 valid signatures in a referendum drive, forcing the City Council to either rescind its vote or put the matter to a public vote.

While the new proposal may win over Los Angeles officials, getting support from Santa Monica officials and residents may prove more difficult.

Santa Monica Councilwoman Christine Reed, who voted for the project, said she is concerned about making a commitment to a new 20-acre park. “We may be getting a development whose sole purpose is to support a new park,” she said. “We need new revenues that we can use for other city services.”

The board of directors of the Friends of Sunset Park, a group of residents living near the project site, voted this week not to endorse Zane’s proposal.

“There is too much uncertainty in this proposal, and I’m not comfortable with its treatment of the traffic and open space,” said Richard Bloom, a board member.