Culver City Eyes the Tax Promise of Mall, Turns Deaf Ear on L.A. Protest

Hungry for millions of dollars in sales tax revenue, the Culver City Council is expected to give final approval Monday to construction of the controversial Marina Place shopping center despite its potential for snarling traffic as far away as Santa Monica.

The proposed $159-million Mediterranean-style regional shopping mall has generated intense opposition from neighbors in Los Angeles who fear the already congested residential and commercial area near Marina del Rey and Venice will be strangled by traffic.

Opponents note that the shopping center’s location--a site nearly surrounded by Los Angeles at the western tip of a thin, two-mile-long finger of Culver City--ensures that while Culver City reaps the financial benefits, the brunt of the traffic the project generates would fall almost entirely on Los Angeles.

To draw attention to the project’s potential impact, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley joined Councilwoman Ruth Galanter at a demonstration Sunday in front of the fenced, 18-acre former industrial site where Marina Place would be built. The property lies just east of heavily traveled Lincoln Boulevard.

More than 50 protesters of all ages carried signs and marched back and forth across busy Washington Boulevard at Walnut and Glencoe avenues to show how traffic would be snarled by the shopping center.

“I want to play dodge ball, not dodge car!” said one sign carried by a youngster.

The 1-million-square-foot project, a joint venture of Prudential Insurance Co. and Marina Simon Associates, would be nearly 50% larger than the Westside Pavilion shopping center, which has drawn the wrath of its West Los Angeles neighbors because of heavy traffic.

A revised environmental impact report concludes that Marina Place--with a Nordstrom and Bullock’s store, other shops, restaurants, and a six-screen movie theater--will generate massive amounts of traffic and contribute to near-gridlock conditions at peak hours weekdays and weekends as far away as Santa Monica. Air quality, the reports says, will also deteriorate.

According to the report, Marina Place will generate 31,000 vehicle trips on a typical weekday. On Saturdays, the shopping center will draw 40,030 trips. And daily traffic volumes are expected to be 42% greater during the Christmas shopping season.

Yet, even with extensive improvements to roadways, intersections and signals, traffic from the mall, when combined with the already heavy traffic in the area, is expected to clog 16 intersections at peak hours on weekdays and 13 intersections on weekends. Some of the affected intersections are several miles away, as far north as the Santa Monica Freeway and as far east as the San Diego Freeway.

The environmental impact report also notes that “fire and emergency medical/rescue response to the (Marina Place) site may also be delayed by traffic congestion due to project-related traffic.”

In addition to the traffic issue, the environmental impact statement says “the proposed project could cause and contribute to significant air quality impacts” including violation of federal and state standards for carbon monoxide at several nearby intersections.

Galanter, whose Venice residence is less than a mile from the Marina Place site, has accused Culver City of supporting the project because it will benefit that city’s treasury “at the expense of Los Angeles residents and all others who must traverse the area’s streets and breathe its air.”

In a letter to Culver City officials, Galanter said the increased carbon monoxide levels would represent “a clear danger to the health and well-being of my constituents and yours.”

Culver City Mayor Jozelle Smith takes a decidedly different view. “I don’t think this project is creating that much negative automobile traffic and air pollution,” she said in an interview.

Smith, who has said she looks forward to shopping at Marina Place, predicted that the project will win approval next week. “I certainly feel confident that we will proceed with it,” she said.

The mayor spoke of the economic benefits to Culver City. “This will provide us a couple million dollars a year in sales tax revenue that will certainly allow us to upgrade our city’s quality of life,” she said. “I feel very positive about the project.”

Smith expressed surprise at last weekend’s demonstration against Marina Place. “I don’t know why there is this fervor,” she said, suggesting that the opposition was due to the presence of “a lot of community activists” in the area.

Steven Gourley, one of two slow-growth members of the Culver City Council, expressed reservations about the shopping mall. “I can’t see burdening this area with 40,000 cars a day,” he said in an interview.