Housing Plan Means Job Loss, Employers Say

Santa Monica needs more housing and the City Council is looking toward its commercial and manufacturing areas to provide it. And there’s the rub.

The struggle over where to encourage--or require--residential development is part of an evolving blueprint for how Santa Monica will look into the next century.

It was debated at a public hearing Tuesday night at which many of the city’s employers asked the City Council not to enact rules that would drive them out of town.

“Residential use jeopardizes industrial use,” said Linda Bozung, an attorney speaking on behalf of a property owner in the city’s manufacturing zone. “We’re asking you to reject this experiment,” she said. “Is it really worth it to jeopardize jobs and the tax base?”

Other business owners told the council that restricting building size on their lots would drive them out of the city by precluding them from expanding.

Having blocked virtually all commercial development in recent years with a moratorium imposed in 1989, coupled with a major rezoning that sharply reduced the permissible size of buildings, the City Council is on the brink of another broad rezoning of its commercial and manufacturing areas.

The council is examining proposals aimed at encouraging an “urban village” atmosphere--in which housing is built above commercial spaces--along Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard and Broadway, and along Lincoln Boulevard north of the Santa Monica Freeway. Parts of the office district near the Colorado Place development are also targeted for mixed housing and commercial use.

To encourage development of housing, the zoning rules would allow property owners to use no more than 70% of the maximum legal building limit for their businesses. The only way to use the rest would be to put in housing.

An earlier proposal to require housing has been abandoned amid howls of protest from the business and real estate community.

Moving over to the east end of the city, the tentative plan is to carve two residential areas out of what is now a light-industrial area. Critics say the residential developments would stand out like a sore thumb there.

The plan would also reduce the allowable size of buildings on most parcels larger than about half an acre by 25%. If this passes, it could mean some property owners may have had their ability to build on their property slashed by 75% since 1988.

Before 1988, large-scale office and commercial complexes such as the Water Garden and Colorado Place were permissible. In the current slow-growth climate, such projects are no longer considered desirable.

The business community is mounting a major campaign to convince council members that their plans are damaging to the city’s economy and are based on economic premises from the boom years of the 1980s.

“The overheated real estate climate does not now exist,” Chamber of Commerce President John Dudzinsky argued at Tuesday’s hearing.

Other speakers scoffed at the feasibility of finding financing for mixed-use projects in commercial areas, saying lenders were averse to mixing housing and retail. “This will produce no housing,” said architect David Hibbert, one of seven speakers from the local chamber.

The City Council, controlled by members of the tenants’ rights group that dominates city politics, is under pressure to find space for housing because the city is in violation of state guidelines aimed at providing housing close to jobs. A job-rich city, Santa Monica is deficient in housing, according to the guidelines.

Many in the business community blame the lack of housing on the council’s vigorous protection of its rent-controlled apartment stock, which in other cities would be redeveloped if the market were permitted to take its course.

“Their rent-control agenda has led them to develop obstructionist housing policies,” developer attorney Chris Harding said.

With the apartment areas off-limits for development politically, the council must eye commercial and industrial areas to find land for housing.

City Planning Manager Suzanne Frick said that the city staff and council are sympathetic to the needs of those in the industrial and commercial zones and that the plan presented Tuesday was intended to address their concerns.

Not everyone is convinced. Walt McHendry of Paper Mate Corp., which has been in Santa Monica since 1957, said the proposed downzoning “severely limits future growth, business opportunities and possibility of employment in Santa Monica.”

The council will consider the complex citywide standards again Tuesday, but will not vote on them until a later meeting.