Latino Cultural Center Approved : Santa Monica: The facility will be part of a downtown affordable- : housing project. It is meant as a replacement for Cine Latino.

With the widespread support of Westside Latino activists, the Santa Monica City Council on Tuesday night approved plans to build a Latino cultural center as part of a downtown affordable-housing project.

The center will probably be used for a range of activities, including dance performances, art exhibits and poetry readings, city officials say.

“Latinos on the Westside need a facility like this to provide an outlet for talent,” said Monica Sahagun, a Santa Monica College student and former president of Mecha, a Chicano student group. “We need it as a resource to help reduce the high number of dropouts and teen pregnancies that affect Latino culture not only in Santa Monica, but in neighboring areas.”

The center represents the city’s effort to replace the Cine Latino, a downtown movie house catering to the local Latino community that was removed as a part of the development of the Third Street Promenade.

“It is my hope that this center will provide a bridge between the Latino community and the public at large,” said Hector Alejandro, a Santa Monica resident and a member of the Indo-Hispanic Quincentennial Committee for Los Angeles. “We will have the chance to put our culture in its larger context and show its contribution to the area as an indigenous population.”

The cultural center is part of a five-story project that will include 44 units of affordable housing as well as retail commercial space.

Work on the $4.6-million project is slated to begin in April, 1992, and will be completed about a year later, according to officials with the Community Corp. of Santa Monica, which is acting as the project’s developer. The project will be paid for with a combination of federal and city funds.

It will be built on a site on 2nd Street south of Santa Monica Boulevard, a site now occupied by a metered parking lot. The cultural center will share the bottom floor with a commercial retail vendor.

The project has drawn some criticism from nearby merchants concerned that the loss of the lot will exacerbate parking problems in the area.

The project will displace 26 metered parking spaces. City staff reports indicate that the housing units will create the need for an additional 51 spaces.

“These (26) spaces are some of the most visible parking spots in the city,” property owner Richard Keller told the council. “There needs to be some consideration of how this loss will impact an already congested situation.”

Although no new spaces are planned as part of the project, city officials said they plan to provide additional parking in a nearby structure in the coming year.