Task Force Urges Mall Be Dropped From Project : Development: Instead, the report recommends that 2,000 units of housing be included in the complex for the Farmers Market site.
The developer of a proposed shopping mall at the Farmers Market said the owners would lose money if they followed the recommendation of a mayoral task force to build 2,000 units of housing at the site.
“Everybody’s going to have to compromise, but they’re off the wall,” said Norman Elkin, vice president of Urban Investment and Development Co., a Chicago-based firm that is working with the A. F. Gilmore Co. to develop Gilmore’s property at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue.
Their latest plans call for 2 million square feet of development at the frequently jammed intersection, including a 1-million-square-foot shopping center, an office building, a hotel and 150 housing units.
But the task force named by Mayor Tom Bradley and the American Institute of Architects turned the plan on its head in a report that was aired at a community meeting Tuesday night. The report is not a part of the strictly regulated city planning process, but the qualifications of its independent experts, and its sponsorship by the mayor, assured its importance as a resource document, members of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission said when it was presented to them last week.
Drawn up by volunteers including planners, architects, a developer and a gerontologist, the report found that “the impact of a regional shopping center would so severely degrade the streets and neighborhood character of Beverly-Fairfax that the proposal must be restructured.” (The gerontologist was added because of the high concentration of senior citizens in the area).
The experts on the Beverly-Fairfax/Miracle Mile Urban Design Workshop recommended that retail space at the Farmers Market development be slashed to one-tenth of what the developers wanted, with apartment houses taking the place of the shopping center.
An accompanying sketch showed six mid-rise apartment structures looming over the Farmers Market and the nearby CBS complex, prompting Elkin to call it a “Chinese wall.” He said it looks like the crowded tenements of the South Bronx in New York.
“You can reach across to borrow toilet paper. . . . ,” Elkin said. “The whole area will be in shadow constantly and block all the views of the Hollywood Hills.”
With the owners of the nearby Park Labrea apartment complex planning to add about 2,500 units at the same time, both of them would be competing for the same tenants if the projects go ahead as recommended by the task force, he said.
“We have to have a program with some economic integrity,” he said, arguing that a shopping center needs at least two major department stores to attract enough business.
The developers have lined up Nordstrom’s, May Co. and possibly a third major department store for the site, but the task force said that this would attract too much traffic. Instead, it suggested that no more than one major department store be added to the existing Farmers Market, along with smaller stores designed to serve neighborhood needs and the tourist trade. The Farmers Market is the city’s second most popular tourist attraction.
Bradley said he was eager to hear the owners’ response, noting that other developers have recently decided to shift the emphasis from commercial to housing in their proposed large-scale projects.
Jane Blumenfeld, planning adviser to the mayor, said that these included the Playa Vista and Channel Gateway projects, both of which are expected to get through the city planning process with little difficulty.
She acknowledged that dropping the shopping center in favor of a housing development might affect the economic viability of the Farmers Market project.
“That’s why the mayor said, ‘Let’s look at what they come up with,’ ” she said. “Park Labrea and the Farmers Market need to look at it and come back. I’m sure there’s some point at which too much housing is too much, but I don’t know exactly what that is.”
The Park Labrea project also includes a major office complex along Wilshire Boulevard, its developers having dropped an earlier proposal for a regional shopping center of their own.
Elkin said he expects that his firm and Gilmore will respond to the mayor once they have more thoroughly analyzed the report.
“It’s a way of carrying on a dialogue. Usually good things come of it,” he said.
Although the Gilmore proposal is not expected to require approval by the mayor--Park Labrea’s will because of proposed zoning changes--both projects face a series of public hearings and reviews by city agencies.
The Gilmore project only requires a change in its subdivision map, a step that ordinarily would only require the signature of a city bureaucrat, but it is expected to go to the City Council for a vote if opponents appeal the subdivision change.
The Park Labrea project, however, requires the mayor’s signature because zoning changes are carried out by city ordinance.
In either case, City Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area, will have a major voice in determining the outcome, but Renee Weitzer, planning deputy for City Councilman John Ferraro, said Ferraro will not make public his response to the Farmers Market and Park Labrea proposals until later this summer.
“For now,” she said, “we just want to keep our options open.”
City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district lies just to the north, has spoken against a major shopping center in the area. He said the Beverly Center and the Westside Pavilion have damaged surrounding neighborhoods by adding too much traffic and attracting other development.
“As a city official, I’m here to convince you that whether this is a Jewish neighborhood, a Korean neighborhood or a mixed neighborhood, let’s keep it a neighborhood,” he said at one of the meetings held to get public input for the report. “And no matter whether it’s black or Latino or anything else, a regional shopping center will kill it,” attracting 50,000 car trips a day.
After the report was released, Yaroslavsky said he expects it to play an important role in determining the future of the area, because no other studies have been done for the Beverly-Fairfax and Miracle Miracle neighborhoods in recent years.
“While this was an advisory report, I think it would be unwise for the decision-makers and the policy-makers--the City Council, Planning Commission and planning staff--to disregard what such an array of competent professionals has concluded,” he said.
But Diana Plotkin, president of the Beverly-Wilshire Homes Assn., warned that supporters of its recommendations would have to keep a close eye on the city planning process as officials mull over the plans in closing months.
“This is just one step,” she said. “Since no law forces developers to abide by it, I don’t see much chance of developers abiding by any recommendations from the goodness of their hearts.”
She also urged that city planners limit the number of car trips generated by any new development to the number now using the site.
Among its other recommendations, the task force urged that Forest City Development, owners of Park Labrea, maintain the facade of the May Co. store at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard as the grand entry to an office complex planned at the site.
The store, which is distinguished by a gleaming gold mosaic in the shape of a huge perfume bottle, is slated for demolition in the company’s latest proposal.
Joan Kraden, a spokesman for Forest City, said the firm would not be able to comment immediately on the recommendation.
“It is technically outside the (planning) process, so it’s very hard to speculate what the effect would be,” she said.
The task force also called for a moratorium on museum expansions in Hancock Park, designation of 25 buildings on the Miracle Mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard as a historic area, development of large parking structures to serve the commercial strips of Melrose, Fairfax and La Brea avenues.
No expansions are planned for Hancock Park, spokesmen for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the George Page Museum said.
Richard J. Jebejian, a leader of merchants along Melrose, said he objected to the idea of big parking structures, saying it would be better to allow property owners to tear down houses to make parking lots along the alleys behind the Melrose shops.
