Developer Sues Ventura Over Design Changes

A Santa Monica developer has sued the city of Ventura, claiming its new municipal design guidelines could derail a $60-million residential and retail complex at the harbor six years in the planning.

The development calls for a 300-unit apartment complex, 20,000 square feet of retail shops and a 104-slip marina. It’s projected that the development would boost revenues for the financially struggling Ventura Port District by more than 10%.

But a revision of the city’s General Plan, approved last month, effectively halts all construction and remodeling throughout the city, according to the lawsuit filed Sept. 7 by Sondermann Ring Partners.

“The problem with the new General Plan is that it calls for, in essence, voiding the entire zoning code of Ventura and putting in a new code that not only has not been written ... [but] will not be written for a couple of years,” said Doug Ring, a land-use attorney and a general partner of Sondermann Ring Partners.

The city denies the claim, saying Ventura is not required to have its zoning regulations and General Plan in full compliance at all times. Also, the city says, the amended General Plan specifically exempts property within the coastal zone, which falls under California Coastal Commission jurisdiction.

City Manager Rick Cole, who complimented the developer for working closely with prospective neighbors to prepare its plan, criticized the lawsuit as a stunt calculated to extract more leverage in negotiating with the city.

“This is a lawsuit that is utterly without any merit, except that it got [media] attention,” Cole said. “This is from a guy who is extraordinarily politically connected.”

Ring, a former lobbyist who controls major leases on apartments and boat slips in Marina del Rey, has been a major campaign contributor in Los Angeles city and county elections.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan appointed Ring to the board of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which oversees development in blighted areas. Ring’s wife, Cindy Miscikowski, was a two-term Los Angeles City Council member through June until forced out by term limits.

Sondermann Ring Partners was selected in 1989 by the Ventura Port District to develop the publicly owned 22-acre waterfront site. After several years of advance planning and numerous meetings with harbor-area neighbors and businesses to resolve concerns, such as increased traffic, the developer and Port District jointly submitted an application to begin the city’s formal review process in early 2004.

The application arrived about the same time the council hired Cole for the city’s top administrative post. Cole, a well-known advocate of “new urbanism” policies and so-called smart growth, has pushed to ensure that future development is consistent with the city’s design and growth objectives.

Cole said city planners disagreed with the developer’s original plan for constructing a gated complex of 13 identical buildings and asked for architectural changes to make the complex more accessible for pedestrians.

“The rules have absolutely changed in the last 18 months. We’re not saying ‘no,’ we’re just trying to understand them,” said Oscar Pena, the Port District’s general manager. “The issue for the developer, and to a certain extent the Port District, is the plans had been in the works for nearly six years. The city is now asking them to make dramatic changes.”

The financially troubled 53-year-old district, which spent five years during the 1990s in bankruptcy, is counting on revenue from the Sondermann Ring project to improve its fortunes.

The district depends on money from port leases for all but about $300,000 of its annual revenue, and the new development is projected to generate an additional $300,000 to $700,000. For the current fiscal year, the port expects to squeak out a profit of less than $11,000 on estimated revenue of nearly $6.5 million.

“We’re losing an opportunity here because of lost time,” Pena said. “How do we get a plan that works for everybody? We’re still waiting to hear from the city what some of those ingredients might be.”

Cole said he thought the city was working closely with the developer, and had suggested the name of a consultant familiar with the city’s design goals to assist in planning. Ventura even paid half the cost to redesign the project in recent months, he said.

No hearing date has been set for the case, and the Ventura city attorney said he has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit.

Dowell Myers, an urban planning professor at USC, said developers with investment plans in the review pipeline are always leery of any rule changes.

“Land along the waterfront is very important to cities,” Myers said. “The coastline in California is really sacred ground that governments try to protect for the greater good.”