All images from the staff presentation to City Council.
After over an hour of public testimony and a presentation by city staff, the City Council quickly passed a resolution affirming the “guiding principles” for the airport conversion project. A list of the principles can be found at the bottom of this article.
However, much of the discussion for the evening was built around two issues not directly addressed in the principles. During public comment, there was a debate over whether or not housing should be considered as a possible use for the land when the airport closes. During the council discussion and debate, the main issue was whether or not the outreach being conducted is actually representative of what city residents think.
A staff report that summarized results of a survey and public outreach showed that building housing on the site ranked 39th in the list of things that people wanted to see on the land, but 2nd on the list of things that people DID NOT want to see.
While public comment at the meeting, and the written public comment received by the Council before the meeting, matched those results, the question becomes who is being surveyed and coming to these meetings? Is it a representative sample?
When questioned directly by Councilmember Jesse Zwick, city staff admitted that so far the outreach that has been done has NOT brought in a representative sample of city residents.
“The people that participated….skewed older and skewed white,” said Amber Richane, the Principle Design and Planning Manager for the City, basically admitting that the public process that requires people to self-select is not recording a representative sample.
When pressed by Zwick about what can be done to change that result, the response was sobering: “We can’t do anything about that in a traditional process.”
Richane did list the things that the city and its consultant team were doing to reach out beyond the “older white” audience that has been overrepresented including the variety of public events, tabling at larger events and creating materials and surveys in multiple languages.
Last year when the Council was selecting what firm would be conducting what kind of public process, Zwick had pushed a proposal for an alternative type of outreach that was designed to reach people “not usually heard from in traditional outreach.” The proposal for that outreach plan was rejected on a 4-3 vote. Of the four people that voted against the proposal, only Mayor Lana Negrete is still on the Council.
It seems that Zwick’s concerns at the time, that a traditional outreach process would favor the loudest voices and not the most representative ones are being born out today.
However, the answer that “we can’t do anything in a traditional process” didn’t sit well with the current Council. Councilmember Barry Snell expressed disappointment in the emphasis on open community meetings, explaining that
“Group seminars, group outings tend not to be those outings that people of color will go to, so you have to go to them…there are social groups and other groups you can go to and explain that this is an incredible opportunity for our future,” Snell explained.
The next phase of outreach and design will begin in February and will use the guiding principles and feedback the consultants have received to create three different scenarios for the current airport land assuming the airport’s closure. The scenarios will go through a public feedback phase and will be presented to City Council for either approval of one of the phases or for instruction to redesign or get more public feedback.
At least one of the proposals will be “LC Compliant.” In 2014, Santa Monica voters passed Measure LC which said that should the airport close, land could not be used for anything except educational and recreation uses without a future vote of city residents. A proposal that included housing would likely be “Non-LC Compliant.” Supporters of a “park only” concept worry that if the city moves with a “Non-LC Compliant” proposal it would delay the airport’s closing or lead to lawsuits by aviation interests against the city.
The guiding principals approved last evening are:
· Start with Nature – The project design should consider the impact of any future intervention on the natural environment, and the Airport land’s ability to regenerate species and build community resiliency against climate change.
· Inspire Wonder – The project should connect individuals in powerful and far-reaching ways uniting people of all backgrounds and ages in meaning, happiness, and heightened energy.
· Balance Economics – The project should achieve economic equilibrium by balancing revenue with construction, operations, maintenance, and programming costs.
· Amplify Versatility – The project should be vibrant in the ‘every day’ and the ‘big day, working for the Santa Monica community for large events and unprogrammed day-to-day activities with active and passive amenities.
· Celebrate Place – The future project should embrace the layers of the site’s history, and share the stories of the place and region, from pre-colonial to the history of aviation on the site.
