San Pedro Rezoning Proposal to Be Revised

The San Pedro Community Plan Advisory Committee decided Wednesday to modify its subcommittee’s rezoning recommendation and will meet again next month to write a final rezoning proposal.

Subcommittee members, who have spent the last seven months drafting their recommendation, were upset that it would undergo major revisions by the full panel.

“As far as the subcommittee went, it looks like we wasted our damn time,” said Tony Marino, a subcommittee member. Shortly after the meeting turned to discussing how to zone Old San Pedro, tempers flared among committee members and residents in the audience, for whom the future of Old San Pedro has been a key subject of debate. That neighborhood runs from 10th Street to 21st Street, and is bordered on the east by Palos Verdes Street and on the west by Pacific Avenue.

Preservation-minded residents oppose the removal of historic single-family homes to make way for multi-unit dwellings, saying that any more development will damage the character of Old San Pedro. But some committee members argued that replacing run-down housing there with new development is the best way to preserve the remaining historic homes in the neighborhood.

Noah Modisett, chairman of the full committee, appeared exasperated at the bickering and suggested continuing discussion of the Old San Pedro zoning until the committee meets March 21.

At that time, other parts of the recommendations that were not taken up will be discussed and voted on, he said.

Most of the 25 people in the audience, appearing to favor tighter zoning than that recommended by the subcommittee, advocated major changes to the plan.

Subcommittee member and slow-growth advocate Shanaz Ardehali-Kordich, for example, said: “We might as well start off with something good before it gets sent on to the council.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores appointed the advisory committee last year to help guide San Pedro’s growth. The citizens panel in turn created a subcommittee that last month presented a detailed rezoning plan to the full committee.

Concern about overdevelopment in San Pedro blossomed in the 1980s as the community experienced a boom that saw hundreds of single-family homes razed for multi-unit projects.

The rezoning being discussed would replace temporary restrictions approved in an interim control ordinance by the City Council in December.

To become law, the committee’s recommendations still must go through several public hearings and be considered by Flores and the City Council. No dates have been set for the hearings.

The report of the subcommittee suggests scores of zoning changes for San Pedro, literally block by block through the community.

Among them are:

* Permitting developers in most of Old San Pedro to build three units on a lot, but only if they are condominiums that adhere to strict design guidelines that the committee develops.

* Downzoning about half of the properties now zoned RD1.5, which allows building one unit per 1,500 square feet. Those properties would receive either an R1 zone, allowing only single-family development; R2, which allows a maximum of two units per lot; or RD2, which allows one unit per 2,000 square feet of space.

* Increasing the density of a block near the Anderson Memorial Senior Center to provide for senior housing.

* Rezoning Rancho San Pedro, a city-owned low-income housing complex, for single-family development as a way to preserve the project. Committee members hope that such zoning would discourage developers from stringing lots together to build multi-unit projects.

* Allowing commercial and manufacturing development on Harbor Boulevard from 3rd Street north to the Harbor Freeway on-ramp.

* Increasing building height limits along Beacon Street between 9th and 13th Streets from 26 feet to 45 feet to create harbor views for new construction.

A full copy of the draft report is available at Councilwoman Flores’ office in the San Pedro municipal building at 638 S. Beacon Street.