After nearly six years, Santa Monica has a new plan that will govern land use in the city’s 230-acre downtown through 2030. While the City Council adopted most aspects of the plan unanimously, there was a clear schism on the…
The Santa Monica City Council will vote tonight on the final Downtown Community Plan amid concerns that last minute changes to the plan’s affordable housing requirements will suppress much-needed housing growth. However, City Manager Rick Cole, in an email to…
With the final decision about the Downtown Community Plan, which will govern changes to the downtown through 2030, scheduled for next Tuesday, housing advocates are concerned that some last-minute changes to the plan’s affordable housing requirements will ultimately undermine the…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. At the City Council meeting last Tuesday night on Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan (DCP) the ironies abounded. As planning staff has told us many times, the DCP is the result of…
The final series of public hearings on the Downtown Santa Monica Community Plan kicked off this week with back-to-back City Council meetings. On Monday night, more than 150 people showed up for a marathon session of public testimony on the…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. After, in words taken from the staff report, “nearly six years in development” (not too much longer than it takes to get approval to build an apartment building!), Santa Monica’s Downtown Community…
The purpose of plans is to help communities confront and prepare for their future. On preparing for a future with climate change, the downtown plan is an utter failure. Instead of focusing on the most salient environmental threat humanity has…
The question I ended my post with on Saturday was why would Santa Monica enact a Downtown Community Plan (DCP) that makes it easier to build commercial development than housing? Keep in mind that this is taking place during a…
This article originally appeared on Healthy City Local. I’m sure readers are trembling with anticipation after I ended my last post with this cliffhanger: aside from drastically reducing the advantage that residential development in downtown Santa Monica had over commercial development…
This piece originally ran on Healthy City Local. There are good ideas in the Downtown Community Plan (DCP): ideas about the role of Santa Monica’s downtown, about nurturing community in “our town” with more and better housing and local-serving retail, about…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. Let me begin my further ruminations and fulminations on the Downtown Community Plan (DCP) with a quibble, namely the failure to include in the DCP’s historical background section mention of Arcadia Bandini…
The following post originally appeared on Healthy City Local. It’s back! The latest (and promised final!) version of Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan (DCP), is being dragged through the Planning Commission, with an ultimate destination of the Promised Land, namely approval by…
After half-a-decade of planning and community outreach, city staff revealed the final draft of the Downtown Community Plan Wednesday to a full house at the east wing of the Civic Auditorium. The 300-page document, which can be downloaded here, lays…
City officials are unveiling Wednesday the “final draft” of the document that will guide the future of Downtown Santa Monica for the next two decades. The Downtown Community Plan — or Downtown Specific Plan — has gone through multiple iterations…
On April 12, the city of Santa Monica will present a final draft of the plan that will shape the future of the bayside city’s downtown for the next two decades. The most recent draft of the Downtown Community Plan…
