Playa Vista Back on Track as Praise Replaces Hostility

In the heart of Westside anti-growth territory, the developer of the enormous proposed city within a city called Playa Vista held a public meeting late last year to unveil plans for a new marina on the edge of Marina del Rey.

The audience of several hundred community activists, boat owners, environmentalists and others listened for 2 1/2 hours as Nelson C. Rising, managing partner for the project, described a “Mediterranean village” of Spanish-style buildings, swaying palm trees, waterways and pedestrian paths.

As Rising wrapped up his presentation, a remarkable thing happened: The audience applauded.

The reaction that night, in a part of Los Angeles where hostility to further development has coalesced into a potent political force, was clear evidence of a shift in attitude toward one of the biggest building projects in the city’s history. The selling of Playa Vista was working.

It was a big change. For years, intense community opposition had stymied Summa Corp.’s effort to develop the vast stretch of open land between the Westchester Bluffs and the Marina. But in February, 1989, Maguire Thomas Partners of Santa Monica took over as the lead developer. The firm, noted for its political connections and well-cultivated good-guy image, was determined to avoid the previous pitfalls.

So far, it has succeeded. A year later, Playa Vista--envisioned as a city of about 24,000 residents, complete with shops, offices, hotels--is back on track. The developer’s willingness to heed local concerns and, where necessary, offer significant concessions, has won it praise from environmental organizations, community groups and neighborhood activists who rarely have anything good to say about a developer.

While conducting this energetic community outreach campaign, Maguire Thomas also has pursued the more conventional strategy of negotiating with and wooing city, county and state officials, often behind closed doors. This, too, has been fruitful. Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, for example, no longer blasts the project as a symbol of overdevelopment, but cites it as a model of environmental and community sensitivity.

Maguire Thomas’ most impressive accomplishment, though, is that it has built all this good will without sacrificing the overall size of the project. It has drastically altered the design of Playa Vista and changed the proposed mix of residential, office and commercial development, but it has not made Playa Vista smaller. In fact, Maguire Thomas has increased the number of proposed residential units more than 30% over what Summa had planned--to 11,750 from 8,800.

From the outset, the firm’s strategy was one of identifying all the people, agencies and organizations whose approval was needed or who were in a position to make trouble for the project, then making a concerted effort to address their questions and concerns. The first name on this list, Maguire Thomas executives decided, was Galanter’s.

Indeed, almost a year before it took over the project, Maguire Thomas’ top officers sought a meeting with Galanter, who had been elected to the City Council in 1987 on a wave of Westside anti-development sentiment.

Galanter Consulted

Before they invested in the project, the Maguire Thomas executives and their financial partners wanted to hear at first hand of Galanter’s concerns about the plan, and to get a feeling for the kind of political and community opposition they might be facing.

In a sense, that March, 1988, meeting in Galanter’s City Hall office marked the start of the firm’s ambitious and aggressive campaign to win over a hostile public.

“She had run against the project, and it was our concern to find out the depth of her opposition,” Rising said. “Obviously, the way the city works, having the support of the elected councilperson in the district is important . . . but we were also concerned about what it was that she objected to.”

Rip-Snorting Meeting’

Accompanying Rising and his colleagues were representatives of JMB Realty Corp. of Chicago, a prospective financial partner in the project, and Summa Corp., founded by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and now owned by his estate. In a recent interview, Galanter recalled it as “one rip-snorting meeting” attended by the developers and “the money boys from Chicago with their briefcases.”

Galanter told them that Playa Vista threatened the fragile Ballona Wetlands at the property’s western edge. Moreover, she said, it would greatly aggravate already-serious traffic congestion in the area. The proposed high-rise office buildings would be overwhelming and out of place. And the project, as proposed by Summa Corp., did nothing to address the city’s growing need for affordable housing.

Maguire Thomas and JMB officials evidently heard nothing in the meeting to scare them off, because in February, 1989, the two companies, both among the nation’s largest commercial developers, had joined forces and taken over Playa Vista. Maguire Thomas, in its lead role, would design, build and market the project. JMB would arrange much of the financing. The Hughes interests took a back seat as a limited partner.

The new development team set out to create a dramatically different vision of Playa Vista, to recast it as a collection of “urban villages” with offices, restaurants, shops and homes within walking distance of each other.

Maguire Thomas principals Robert F. Maguire III and James A. Thomas pledged to work closely with Galanter, other officials, agencies and neighborhood groups to “create a plan that will improve the quality of life for people in both Playa Vista and the neighboring communities.”

Opening a Dialogue

Maguire Thomas’ first order of business was to open a dialogue with the community. Rising developed a polished pitch for Playa Vista, consisting of a talk, slide show and question-and-answer session, which he has presented more than 200 times in the past year--sometimes to as few as half a dozen people.

A few critics have noted that the presentation is long on ambience and short on specifics, but even the skeptics acknowledge that Rising and his team of architects, planners and consultants do listen to their audiences.

Summa Plan

What they heard at first at these public forums was often a cacophony of complaints about the old Summa plan.

The Summa project called for 6 million square feet of office space concentrated in high-rise towers, over 1 million square feet of retail space including a regional shopping center, 8,800 apartments and condominiums, 2,400 hotel rooms and a marina.

Maguire Thomas immediately indicated a willingness to scrap wholesale elements of the Summa plan. Over the past year, the amount of office space has been reduced. The high-rise buildings and the shopping center have been eliminated.

Yet, by any measure, Playa Vista is still huge.

Maguire Thomas wants to build a multibillion-dollar complex of:

* 5 million square feet of office space (more than twice that of Century City’s trademark 44-story twin towers).

* 11,750 residential units, more than in all of Hermosa Beach.

* 720,000 square feet of retail space, slightly more than that in the Westside Pavilion.

* 2,400 hotel rooms, more than twice the number at the Century Plaza Hotel.

* A marina of more than 40 acres, with 750 slips and buildings up to eight stories tall.

In response to suggestions from the community, Maguire Thomas has offered major concessions:

The tallest buildings will be 10 stories. A greenbelt will be developed at the base of the Westchester Bluffs. To protect the wetlands, most of the office space will be at the eastern edge of the property, near the San Diego Freeway.

To reduce traffic, Maguire Thomas plans an internal transit system and an express bus link to major Los Angeles-area business centers.

Recycling, sewage treatment and waste water reclamation are to be built into the project. Parks, open space and walkways are incorporated into the new plan.

To satisfy the demands of Galanter and others, Maguire Thomas agreed that 1,760 apartments, or 15% of the housing units, will be affordable for people of average incomes.

One major obstacle to the project was a long-standing lawsuit over the Ballona Wetlands. Where Summa had seemed intent on developing as much of the acreage as possible, Maguire Thomas entered negotiations with the Friends of Ballona Wetlands on preserving more of the marsh.

Negotiations in the lawsuit are continuing, but both sides now believe that a resolution is in sight. Maguire Thomas has offered to protect and restore 270 acres of the wetlands, an area that represents about 30% of Playa Vista’s 887 acres.

Overall plans are in the design stage, with environmental impact studies and government approvals pending, but so far, they have drawn generally favorable reviews from community groups long hostile to the Summa plan. Maguire Thomas hopes to begin construction in 1992.

Howard Hughes’ Land

Howard Hughes bought the farmland and fields of Playa Vista for a pittance in the 1940s. He built an airfield and aircraft plant on the eastern edge, but left vacant the wetlands that lies 2 miles to the west.

As the years passed, the Hughes property increasingly resembled an island in a sea of urban development. About two years after Hughes died in 1976, executives at Summa decided it was time to build on the land. They drafted plans for a $1-billion city of high-rise offices, residences, stores, hotels and a marina.

Summa won city, county and California Coastal Commission approval for its Playa Vista master plan in 1984, but fierce opposition--particularly the Friends of Ballona Wetlands lawsuit--stopped the project before subdivision approvals were obtained.

In addition to being distressed over the colossal scale of the project, area residents were angered by Summa’s strategy for gaining approval, which consisted primarily of cultivating key political figures while ignoring the neighbors.

Summa was “just a disaster, as far as dealing with the public,” said Carlyle Hall, attorney for the Ballona Wetlands group. He described the Las Vegas-based company as “a bunker-mentality developer . . . that makes campaign contributions and steam-rolls a project over the community.”

Public anger over the Summa plan became a central element of Galanter’s grass-roots campaign to unseat Councilwoman Pat Russell in 1987.

Galanter’s basic theme--that Russell was too close to developers and had become their ally at City Hall--struck a nerve with voters.

The day after her election, Galanter pledged to scale back Playa Vista, save more of the wetlands, reduce the commercial space and add more housing for low-income and moderate-income people. From the outset, she also insisted that the planning of Playa Vista be more of a public process and less of a back-room one.

But Galanter, whose own background was in urban planning, also recognized it was inevitable that the property would be developed someday. So did most other community activists.

Ruth Lansford, chairwoman of Friends of Ballona Wetlands, said her group is “working well” with Maguire Thomas, particularly in contrast to its dealings with Summa. Of Rising, she said: “You can ask him a direct question and can get a direct answer.”

Activists Consulted

Julie Inouye, a founder of Playa del Rey Network, a coalition of neighborhood groups, said she was pleased to have been consulted about the plan. “From the very beginning, they called all of us,” Inouye said.

“Summa’s basic position seemed to be ‘Take it or leave it--this is what we are going to do’ ” added Moe Stavnezer, a Venice community activist. “Maguire Thomas has done a really superb job of taking the edge off.”

John L. Goolsby, Summa president, said company officials now recognize that they should have done “a number of things differently. If we learned a lesson, it is to be more sensitive to the concerns of the community.”

Although Galanter has not yet given her endorsement to the project, she said she is pleased with the way things are going.

“My sense is they are making a serious effort to do everything I asked them to do,” she said. “Nothing is real until they submit something to the city. That is why you don’t see me on a soapbox claiming victory yet.”

Jane Blumenfeld, planning deputy to Mayor Tom Bradley, called Playa Vista “so compatible with the environment and so positive,” compared with Porter Ranch, a similarly huge development taking shape in the San Fernando Valley.

Last month, Bradley sharply criticized Porter Ranch for its lack of affordable housing, an automobile-dependent design that failed to place homes near shops and offices and failure to promote recycling and water reclamation.

Despite the glowing reviews for Playa Vista so far, Stavnezer and other activists say they want to see an environmental impact report--still probably six months away--before they decide whether to support the project.

“What they want to build is pretty enormous, there is no getting around that,” Stavnezer said.

Salvatore Grammatico, president of the Coalition of Concerned Communities, a group of neighborhood associations, is similarly skeptical. “We are dealing with pros, the best I’ve ever seen,” he said.

So far, he said, Maguire Thomas has simply presented drawings of a project with a “very nice ambience.” By concentrating on the advantages rather than the “nuts and bolts of the impacts,” he said, Maguire Thomas is “selling the skin without the skeleton.”

Grammatico said there are many unanswered questions about how the project will affect surrounding areas, particularly questions about traffic.

Rising said that Maguire Thomas is planning a series of workshops in coming months on elements of the environmental impact report. Letters went out late last week, inviting hundreds of neighborhood residents to participate in its preparation. “It is our view that if we find out their concerns in advance, many of them can be addressed,” he said.

Heading Off Delays

The public sessions serve another purpose for the developer: They serve to minimize delays.

Rising acknowledges that “delay can be expensive,” but he flatly refused talk about any financial aspect of Playa Vista, including the overall cost. “We’re a private company and it’s a private transaction,” he said.

“There are a variety of reasons other than the financial obligations of the (carrying) costs that led us to pursue our strategy,” Rising explained. “That’s the way we think we can make the most viable project and, coincidentally, that’s the way you get a plan that is approvable earlier.”

But Maguire Thomas is not relying solely on its dialogue with the community. Its top executives are seasoned veterans of Los Angeles politics. Rising was chairman of Bradley’s first campaign for governor, for example. Founders Maguire and Thomas are both personal friends of the mayor. All the executives have been active contributors to the campaigns of numerous officeholders.

The company, furthermore, is no stranger to big projects.

The 73-story First Interstate World Center in downtown Los Angeles, the tallest building on the West Coast, is a Maguire Thomas project.

Maguire Thomas also built Plaza Las Fuentes, a shopping, hotel and office complex in the Pasadena Civic Center, and is developing both Colorado Place, a major office complex, and a controversial oceanfront hotel in Santa Monica.

In the case of Playa Vista, private discussions are continuing with Galanter’s office and city transportation engineers. Negotiations on the plan for the new marina are under way behind closed doors with county officials. And extensive talks have taken place with state Controller Gray Davis over a land swap that would allow Maguire Thomas to build on 70 acres next to Playa Vista that the state acquired in lieu of taxes from the Hughes estate.

The negotiations toward settling the Friends of Ballona Wetlands lawsuit provide a good example of Maguire Thomas’ thoroughness. Because the city, county and state are all co-defendants in the suit, the developer sees the potential for a package settlement. In exchange for its commitment to protecting additional wetlands, Maguire Thomas wants a promise that government agencies will expeditiously process all applications for zoning approvals and building permits.

Galanter says that is a fair request.

“What they are basically asking from the city and all these other agencies is, if we do all these things for you--change the whole plan, hire all these consultants, get out of the wetlands and so on and so on--what we are entitled to in return is a fair break in getting this new, reduced, more expensive plan implemented so we can make money instead of carrying the thing forever.

“And if they do all these things,” Galanter said, “I think they have a reasonable argument.”

Revised Playa Vista Plan

The overall development plan for Playa Vista has been completely recast by its developer, Maguire Thomas Partners.

THE PLAYA VISTA PROJECT Facts and figures on the Playa Vista development project: HISTORY: Howard Hughes bought the land in the 1940s and the land was part of his estate when he died in 1976. Hughes’ company, Summa Corp., was the principal developer until last year, when it sold controlling interest to Maguire Thomas Partners of Santa Monica. Summa has retained a minority investment in the project.

SIZE: 887 acres in an irregularly shaped, three-mile-long parcel at the base of the Westchester bluffs. About 270 acres of wetlands are to be preserved as bird and wildlife habitat.

As currently envisioned by the developer, Playa Vista will include:

5 million square feet of office space, more than twice the amount in the 44-story twin towers of Century City.

11,750 residential units.

720,000 square feet of retail space, slightly more than that in the Westside Pavilion.

2,400 hotel rooms, more than twice the Century Plaza Hotel.

A marina of more than 40 acres, with 750 boat slips and residential buildings up to eight stories tall.

PLAYA VISTA vs. PORTER RANCH: A COMPARISON

Only one other development in the works in Los Angeles is even close in size to Playa Vista. The Porter Ranch project in the northwest San Fernando Valley occupies a larger area, but more development is envisioned at Playa Vista. Here is a comparison of the two projects:

SIZE

* Playa Vista: 887 acres.

* Porter Ranch: 1,300 acres.

HOUSING

* Playa Vista: 11,750 condominiums and apartments (no single-family homes).

* Porter Ranch: 3,395 single-family houses and townhouses.

STATUS

* Playa Vista: Developers are preparing environmental impact studies, the last step before seeking final city, county and state Coastal Commission approval; construction not expected until 1992.

* Porter Ranch: Environmental reviews completed; awaiting final City Council action; start of construction possible later this year.