Protest Gives Way to People at Playa Vista
The first residents of the new community of Playa Vista moved into their apartments Monday, a quarter century after initial plans for the mini-city near Marina del Rey spawned one of Los Angeles County’s most protracted and bitter development struggles.
The arrival of U-haul vans, women carrying armloads of clothes and men hoisting couches into sandstone-colored buildings beside Lincoln Boulevard marks a major watershed in a land-use dispute that began when Jimmy Carter was president.
One look around his unblemished two-bedroom apartment and Matt Alexander, a 31-year-old pastry chef, was smitten: “It’s clean. It’s new. It’s mine.” His first load of belongings included a pair of skis, a skateboard and enormous stereo speakers.
Yet, the arrival of the first occupants this week does not dispel the uncertainty hanging over the 1,087 acres at the foot of the Westchester Bluffs, where billionaire adventurer Howard Hughes built the World War II-era Spruce Goose “flying boat.”
Still being hotly disputed are the final size and scope of the development and of the largest remaining coastal wetlands in Los Angeles County. Plans for the second phase of the project, due out this year, are sure to renew debate about traffic, air quality and the safety of building on top of an underground methane storage facility.
But those issues are having no apparent effect on the many prospective tenants who bid, sight unseen, for apartments and condominiums.
“As long as it doesn’t sink into the ground or explode, I’ll be happy here,” said Alexander, lugging a mattress into his apartment.
The initial 120 units at the project’s Fountain Park apartments will be filled immediately, followed by another 585 units in the coming months. Dozens of Moderne-style condominiums just to the south are expected to open for their owners by November.
This flesh and blood component--not to mention the new “Playa Vista, CA 90094” ZIP Code--seems to confer on the budding community a permanence and viability that has long eluded it.
“Somebody is actually sleeping at Playa Vista tonight,” said Steve Soboroff, president of the Playa Vista development firm. “It’s not just empty buildings and security guards at night. It’s people’s homes.”
In the coming months, the developer and a public land trust will try to cement a deal that would alter the face of Playa Vista yet again--doubling the size of the salt marsh preserve and slicing the number of potential Playa Vista residents from 30,000 to about half that.
Then there are the opponents who have held the project at bay for more than two decades by filing myriad lawsuits, chaining themselves to bulldozers and discouraging powerful investors. In the process, they altered the balance of power at City Hall and ensured that at least some portion of the property is left to nature. They are not going away.
Today, they remain incredulous at the 175,910 extra vehicles a day that full build-out could bring to this traffic choke point between the Westside and Los Angeles International Airport. And they say the adjacent wetlands cannot thrive unless they are greatly expanded.
Marcia Hanscom, director of the Wetlands Action Network, still insists that the entire property that stretches from the 405 Freeway to the Pacific Ocean should be restored to its natural state.
“One of our supporters in New York sent us a National Geographic from 1979 with a photograph of these unfinished condominiums being blown up to make way for park land,” Hanscom said recently. “It gives us hope that we can still do this.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of prospective tenants welcome the possibility of apartments and condominiums with ocean breezes in a region desperate for new housing.
Glenn Marzano, a free-lance photographer, said he couldn’t wait to move in Wednesday.
“Location, location, location,” Marzano said when asked why he is taking a two-bedroom apartment at Playa Vista, sight unseen, months before many of the promised amenities will be in place.
Marzano is one of the 15% of tenants who will receive his apartment at a reduced rate, under a development agreement with the city to make the housing more affordable. That doesn’t mean Playa Vista will be a haven for the poor. A subsidized three-bedroom apartment, at about $700 below the market rate, will still go for $1,635 a month.
Thousands more condos, townhouses, lofts and detached single-family homes are planned, at prices expected to range from $200,000 to more than $1 million.
Come fall, a land purchase is supposed to open the way for construction of a 3-million-square-foot complex of office buildings, each up to five stories tall.
The developers say 22,000 people have expressed interest in buying or leasing one of the 3,246 dwellings in the project’s first phase.
“We desperately need housing,” said City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the area and has been instrumental in shaping the development. “I’m so thrilled people will finally be living there.”
Galanter came to office in 1987, deposing council President Pat Russell, in large measure because of her opposition to an earlier version of Playa Vista. That plan included high-rises on the coastal side of Lincoln Boulevard, a golf course and a new boat basin for Marina del Rey.
Galanter insists that current plans for the first phase strike the proper balance amonghousing, commercial uses and open space.
“Basically, this is a project designed to do smart growth,” she said, “with jobs and housing in the same place and a substantive amount of land under permanent protection.”
After Howard Hughes’ death, his Summa Corp. approached city and county officials with the proposal for a new community on the property. The 1978 development plans included high-rise office buildings, 7,000 housing units and 600 boat slips at adjacent Marina del Rey. The company planned a nature preserve of about 72 acres.
By the time the Coastal Commission approved the project in 1984, it had grown to more than 8,800 apartments, houses and condominiums, and the proposed Ballona Wetlands preserve had expanded to 175 acres.
Environmentalists sued to nullify the plan and to preserve more of the wetlands--an oasis for several endangered species and a stopover on the Pacific Flyway for migratory birds.
A decade after the initial proposal, many believed the impasse had finally ended. A new developer, Maguire Thomas Partners, took over the project and quickly agreed to set aside or restore 340 acres of open space, which includes a section of Ballona Creek.
That solution was good enough for one generation of environmentalists, and the compromise won the crucial blessing of Councilwoman Galanter, allowing the first phase of the project to advance.
But a new set of critics was soon dogging Playa Vista. They were determined that the entire property be spared from development. And their relentless opposition threatened to scuttle any progress the developer managed to make.
When DreamWorks SKG and the city struck a deal in 1995 to bring the glamorous anchor tenant to the property, for example, opponents dressed in frog suits to confront the conservation minded studio chiefs, accusing them of hypocrisy.
The opponents sued time and again and usually lost. But the delays drove up the cost of the project. And, after four years of uncertainty and problems with financing, DreamWorks pulled out of the project in 1999.
Frustrated by the repeated delays, the investment banks and union pension fund that own most of Playa Vista hired real estate broker Soboroff last October to move the project ahead. The former mayoral candidate had helped close the deals to build Staples Center arena and the Alameda Corridor rail project.
Soboroff has tried to bring a sense of urgency to the development and touts its energy-saving technology--in lighting, heating and air conditioning, transportation and other areas. He buzzes around the property in an electric golf cart and says residents will be able to use the vehicles, instead of their cars, for short trips or errands on the property.
That will do little, opponents say, to stop the traffic that will soon deluge neighborhood streets.
The first phase of Playa Vista, alone, will generate an additional 39,500 vehicle trips daily, putting roughly 4,500 more cars on the road during morning and evening rush hours.
Playa Vista plans to spend $100 million on road improvements, including the widening of Lincoln and Culver boulevards. As a result, the developer says traffic will move more freely through many intersections.
But neighbors worry that widening the roads and improving more than 100 intersections will only shift bottlenecks, not eliminate them.
“It increases the capacity of the roads right next to the site, but it doesn’t solve the problem of how do people get there,” said Bryan Gordon, president of the Mar Vista Neighborhood Assn. Nor will it help with the wall of traffic that inches along the San Diego Freeway, as it narrows near the site, Gordon said.
Of late, opponents have charged that the greatest hazard at Playa Vista will be the Gas Co. facility that stores methane in the bedrock deep below the site.
The builders say they can monitor and control any leaks with an elaborate system of airtight membranes and vents beneath concrete foundations. A team of city officials has declared that the new buildings can be made safe.
But skeptics say the gas is too mobile and will be able to accumulate to explosive levels in the new homes and offices.
The final magnitude of Playa Vista may turn largely on a deal to convert more of the project to open space. In years gone by, such a purchase seemed like dreamy speculation. The builders were unwilling and the real estate simply cost too much for the public to acquire.
Yet these are unusual times.
Not only is Playa Vista now a willing seller, but the state government for the first time in a decade has enough bond money to make a deal work.
The deal began to gain momentum last year when the developers of Playa Vista signed an agreement with a land broker, the Trust for Public Land, to allow a state-certified appraiser to set a fair price.
An agreement specifies that Playa Vista’s developers can reject the sale, but cannot bargain for more than the appraised price. If a sale can be completed, the trust would transfer the land to the state of California.
“This is a moment in time that we have to seize,” said Reed Holderman, Trust for Public Land’s California director. “Does anyone want to go through another 20 years of battles and controversy?”
As the appraisal nears completion, Soboroff said he is optimistic. He believes the price will be high enough for him to make a strong recommendation to the owners to sell. Principal investors include Union Labor Life Insurance Co., investment banks Morgan Stanleyand Goldman, Sachsand Oak Tree Capital Management Co. and Pacific Capital Group, which is run by Global Crossing chief executive, Gary Winnick.
“I try to move people to the middle and make them 70% happy,” said Soboroff. “The owners have said the value of the land is well over $200 million. That is considered out of the ballpark by Reed [Holderman] and his folks. I think it’s going to be somewhere around. . . . What’s 70% of $200 million?”
Hanscom, the most vocal critic of Playa Vista, vows to fight the proposed sale if the appraisal sets the value above $100 million. Anything more, she said, would amount to bailout of the developers and inflate future open space purchases along the coast.
Moreover, she believes that her group and other members of Citizens United to Save All of Ballona can prevent the Playa Vista builders from ever developing the 193 acres--without making a deal.
“There is no question that our coalition has brought them to this point, to want to sell this land,” Hanscom said. “Why should we give up now?”
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Playa Vista History
Key events in the Playa Vista project, a residential, office, hotel and retail community:
January 1978 The late Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp. begins working with city and county officials on Playa Vista plans.
January 1984 California Coastal Commission approves the land-use plan, which includes an agreement to restore and manage a 175-acre wetlands.
December 1984 Friends of Ballona Wetlands files suit, seeking to void the land-use plan approved by the state Coastal Commission.
December 1986 Land-use plans are recertified by the state Coastal Commission.
February 1989 Maguire Thomas Partners take over as lead developer of Playa Vista.
October 1990 Maguire Thomas Partners reaches an agreement with Friends of Ballona Wetlands. Key terms of the agreement include the developers setting aside wetlands acreage and contributing $10 million toward its restoration.
September 1993 Los Angeles City Council approves the first phase of Playa Vista.
December 1995 Los Angeles City Council gives initial approval to the DreamWorks SKG studio complex.
July 1999 DreamWorks SKG scraps its studio project.
April 2000 Playa Vista begins construction on Visitor Center and 705-unit apartment building.
July 2001 Architect Frank O. Gehry is hired by developer Rob Maguire to plan about 60 acres of the development.
August 2001 Playa Vista gives the Trust for Public Land an exclusive option to buy 193 acres of Ballona Wetlands for salt marsh preserve.
April 2002 First tenants move into the projecteithers Fountain Park apartments, near Lincoln Boulevard.
Source: Times archives
Researched by MALOY MOORE and JEFFREY L. RABIN / Los Angeles Times
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Conservation: Ecologists oppose development, still hope to expand wetlands. Story, graphic, A14
