Playa Vista Traffic Accord Set; Impact Study Held Up : Transportation: City agrees to an unprecedented package of developer-financed improvements aimed at avoiding gridlock in the project’s early stages.

From the start, developers of the Playa Vista project have known that traffic congestion was the greatest potential roadblock to construction of one of the biggest developments in Los Angeles history.

No other issue has loomed so large or proved so daunting as how to deal with the volume of traffic that would be generated by building a city-within-a-city between Marina del Rey and the Westchester Bluffs.

For many months, developer Maguire Thomas Partners and Los Angeles transportation officials engaged in long and difficult negotiations over how much traffic Playa Vista will create and what can be done to manage it.

After a marathon effort, the city and Maguire Thomas last week agreed on an unprecedented package of developer-financed transportation improvements aimed at avoiding gridlock in the project’s early stages.

The improvements include such measures as widening streets and buying additional buses for use along crowded Lincoln Boulevard. A sophisticated traffic control system would be installed on the heavily traveled route and major improvements made to dozens of intersections.

The traffic issue is so critical that the project’s long-awaited environmental impact report could not be finished until partial solutions to the congestion problem had been found.

The draft environmental impact report was to have been made public this week, but release has stalled again.

This time, release was postponed at Maguire Thomas’ request after officials in neighboring Culver City asked for more time to review Playa Vista’s potential effects on the flow of traffic in that city.

“Culver City isn’t quite comfortable with it,” Maguire Thomas senior partner Nelson Rising said. “When somebody as important as Culver City wants more time, we’ll accommodate them.”

Since Maguire Thomas took over as the lead developer of Playa Vista in February, 1989, company executives have made it clear that they want project’s environmental impact report to be “bulletproof”--so complete that it will withstand any environmental lawsuit.

An earlier version of the project, planned by Maguire Thomas’ predecessor, Summa Corp., was stopped in its tracks by protracted litigation over protection of the Ballona Wetlands.

So Maguire Thomas obliged last Friday when Culver City officials dusted off an agreement dating to the Summa days. The pact guaranteed the city a chance to review Playa Vista’s traffic impact before the environmental report is released to the public.

“It’s an enormous project so we knew it would have potentially enormous impacts,” said Mark Winogrond, Culver City’s community development director. “It does have significant impacts on a number of Culver City intersections.”

As Maguire Thomas and Los Angeles transportation officials narrowed their differences during the last month, the developer began supplying more detailed traffic information to Culver City, which lies just to the east of the vast Playa Vista property.

“Our goal was to have enough time to review the material and comment to the Playa Vista team and to the City of Los Angeles before the (environmental report) was released,” Winogrond said.

Culver City asked for a delay when it became apparent that city planners had not had a chance to review all of the technical information. Chief Administrative Officer Jody Hall-Esser said the city wanted to analyze the traffic data and ensure that any mitigation measures would be “feasible and reasonable.”

The California Environmental Quality Act requires developers to identify any adverse environmental impacts caused by a proposed project and to find ways to mitigate the negative effects.

“It will be a truly creative challenge to soften the impacts of the project to a level that is acceptable,” Winogrond said. “Mitigations are always technically possible, but are they reasonable? What effect do they have on the quality of the community? On paper, you can always mitigate the impacts.”

After a long and arduous struggle, Maguire Thomas and the City of Los Angeles last week arrived at a package of transportation improvements to mitigate most of the traffic impact of Playa Vista’s first phase. Separate environmental impact reports are being prepared on Phase I and the entire project.

The beginning stage consists of 3,246 residential units, 1.25 million square feet of office space, 35,000 square feet of retail space and 300 hotel rooms. Initial construction would take place in two distinct areas east of Lincoln Boulevard and south of Jefferson Boulevard.

Although it amounts to less than a quarter of the entire Playa Vista development, handling the projected traffic from just the first phase has been a challenge for Maguire Thomas.

“It was rigorous test of their endurance and patience,” said Tom Conner, assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

Last spring, the city identified 67 of 105 intersections from Santa Monica to El Segundo and east to Culver City and Inglewood that would be “significantly” or “adversely” affected by the addition of Playa Vista traffic.

For more than five months, transportation officials have tried to find solutions to the serious congestion that would result. “It was a difficult effort just in terms of the appropriate mitigation,” Conner said. “We had to study and restudy the intersections.”

Conner said the environmental impact report will contain a detailed description of the changes proposed for each intersection. In the end, a grab bag of techniques is recommended to reduce congestion, such as widening streets, eliminating parking along some thoroughfares and adding traffic lanes.

A computerized system is recommended to control traffic signals on Lincoln Boulevard from Hughes Terrace in Westchester to the Santa Monica city line.

And in an innovative approach, Maguire Thomas has agreed to buy four buses for use in the Lincoln corridor and pay for 15 years of operation and maintenance. The developer will will provide special equipment so those buses and others can override traffic signals to speed their movement.

“I think we are going to mitigate all of the (traffic) impacts in Phase I of the project,” Rising said. “It won’t be cheap, to be sure.”

In addition, Maguire Thomas will commit to reducing commuter trips to Playa Vista by encouraging ride-sharing and providing cash incentives to encourage transit use instead of free parking. The project’s mix of office, residential and retail uses is also intended to reduce auto trips and encourage walking and use of shuttle buses.

“I think we are satisfied with the Phase I mitigation package,” Conner said. “I think it’s fairly solid.”

But others are not ready to sign off yet.

Culver City is concerned about Playa Vista’s effect on 14 intersections in that city and wants to test the proposed mitigation measures to see if they will work.

Another major issue is the impact of planned changes to on-ramps and off-ramps at Jefferson Boulevard and the northbound San Diego Freeway.

Caltrans and Culver City officials do not like the idea of building a new on-ramp to permit motorists eastbound on Jefferson to bypass an existing traffic signal to reach the freeway.

“They are just moving traffic from being stopped on Jefferson to being stopped on a (freeway) collector road with a meter,” said David Gilstrap, a senior transportation engineer for the California Department of Transportation. “It’s not a real solution to the problem, it’s just putting the cars somewhere else to wait.”

The new on-ramp also would eliminate the existing Jefferson Boulevard off-ramp.

“We have very, very strong reservations about that,” said Arthur L. Kassan, a traffic consultant to Culver City. Elimination of the exit would take traffic away from local businesses and force cars onto already overloaded alternate routes, he said.

Beyond the first phase, the larger question of how to deal with the traffic spawned by later stages of the Playa Vista project remains unanswered.

“I think the impacts are going to be so significant that I am kind of at a loss to know how they can be satisfactorily mitigated,” Gilstrap said. “I guess it’s like waiting for an 8.0 earthquake. I can wait.”

Conner said the layout of the streets and highways and the presence of the Westchester Bluffs, Ballona Creek, and Pacific Ocean are impediments to moving traffic through the Playa Vista area. “We’ve really exhausted many of the physical highway improvements in Phase I,” he said. “I think they will have a difficult time finding mitigation for the remainder of the project.”

Playa Vista -- A City Within a City The huge office, retail, residential, hotel and marina complex is planned on a tract between Marina del Rey and the Westchester Bluffs. Most of the land was part of the estate of industrialist Howard Hughes. PLAYA VISTA Size: 1,087 acres straddling Ballona Creek, including the Ballona Wetlands. Housing: 13,085 residential units--apartments, condominiums and townhouses--in buildings up to eight stories tall. Enough housing for 28,600 residents. Business: 5 million square feet of office space, 595,000 square feet of retail space, 1,050 hotel rooms. Total employment estimated at almost 20,000 jobs. Boating: Small craft marina of 45 acres with 600 to 840 boat slips. Status: Environmental impact report being prepared. Approval needed from the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, California Costal Commission, state and federal agencies. Construction: First phase unlikely to begin before late 1993. Sources: Maguire Thomas Partners.