Council OKs Huge Central City West Project : Development: Builders make major concessions involving transportation and affordable housing. Cooperation marked negotiations with residents.
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved development plans for an innovative 465-acre “self-contained urban village” adjacent to downtown that will include a core of office towers and shops encircled by 18,000 dwellings for the affluent and poor alike.
Central City West, the largest revitalization ever attempted downtown without public redevelopment funds, was hailed by federal and state officials as a model for tackling housing, transportation and growth problems.
The 22-block-long project will be erected over the next 20 years by a group of private developers in an area bounded by the Harbor and Hollywood freeways, Olympic Boulevard, Witmer Street and Glendale Boulevard. The area has been devastated by housing demolitions and persistent poverty.
The multibillion-dollar project is the result of five years of negotiations between City Councilwoman Gloria Molina, city planners, hundreds of low-income residents known as the United Neighbors of Temple-Beaudry and a dozen high-powered landowners known as Central City West Associates.
“It is one of the most perfect plans we have ever moved in this city,” Molina said moments before the council voted 11 to 2 to send the plan to the city attorney for final drafting of ordinances.
“It involved many, many people,” Molina said, nodding toward an audience of 75 mostly Latino residents who negotiated on behalf of their community.
“I’m so happy I can’t explain,” said one tenant leader, Mauricia Miranda, whose daughter translated her remarks. “In 10 years, I dream of a community of Temple-Beaudry constructed in Central City West.”
Melanie Fallon, city acting planning director, said the project will transform a “wasteland” into a vibrant community of carefully preserved turn-of-the-century neighborhoods, new luxury and affordable dwellings, plentiful small parks and major commercial and retail ventures.
“This is the first plan we have in Los Angeles that we can truly say offers a jobs-and-housing balance,” Fallon said. “It doubles the amount of housing allowed for under previous zoning . . . while giving great attention to building heights, green space and livability.”
Fallon noted that the old zoning for the area eventually would have allowed 42 million square feet of commercial space to be built “in a far more haphazard way,” but the new proposal downzones the commercial area to 25 million square feet while boosting housing and open space.
“It’s too bad we didn’t do the rest of downtown this way,” said Councilman Joel Wachs--a sentiment echoed by several council members. He praised Molina for mediating between residents and developers, saying, “This is a remarkable piece of planning.”
Under the plan, private developers have made several first-ever guarantees that city planners called “revolutionary.” They include:
* Commercial developers will pay into a housing construction fund a fee of $4.20 per square foot of commercial development. The money will be used to construct up to 5,000 rental units for low-income families.
* Developers will guarantee construction of replacement housing for about 2,000 affordable units that were demolished in recent years. The guarantees must be provided before developers are issued certificates of occupancy by the city for their commercial and retail ventures.
* Developers will be assessed $18,420 for every rush-hour vehicle trip generated by their buildings--an amount believed to be a record high in Los Angeles. The money will pay for extensive improvements to major thoroughfares, freeway ramps and freeway lanes in the downtown area.
Developers of Central City West are expected to fund $355 million in traffic alterations, while the adjacent Central Business District and regional transportation agencies will pay about $290 million for related downtown improvements.
Voting against the proposal were councilmen Marvin Braude and Nate Holden, who said the project will worsen severe traffic problems around the four-level intersection of the Harbor and Hollywood freeways.
However, the project is being praised by both Caltrans and the federal Department of Transportation, which noted that Central City West’s transportation plan is the most complete program for improving downtown traffic ever proposed.
“This specific plan is a good starting point for an ultimate downtown solution,” said city transportation official Allyn Rifkin. “Nobody has gone this far before.”
Fallon noted that the entire project has been endorsed by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which called Central City West “truly significant for its private funding” of affordable housing.
City officials said that the high degree of cooperation between developers and residents was equally significant.
Numerous meetings were held between the mostly poor residents of the area, city officials and lobbyists for the landowners, who include SP Co., Ray Watt, Tutor Saliba Properties and others.
Influential downtown lobbyist George Mihlsten represented developers in discussions that saw Spanish-speaking mothers from United Neighbors of Temple-Beaudry venturing into bank boardrooms, and on other occasions saw business executives attending meetings at the modest homes of residents.
In the end, the residents prevailed upon the developers to more than double the number of units of affordable housing they had intended to build.
David Grannis, an urban planner who is executive director of Central City West Associates, representing the developers and landowners, said his experience stands in dramatic contrast to the normally bitter and divisive battles that occur when major developments are proposed in Los Angeles.
“This is a real shift in terms of public-private efforts,” Grannis said. “For the first time, all sides have agreed through consensus not only on growth but on housing, traffic and child care. We are in total, remarkable agreement.”
