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News, City Council, Downtown, Santa Monica
Colorado Esplanade, Prop. 13 On Deck For Santa Monica City Council Tuesday Night
Posted May. 13, 2013, 9:16 am
Parimal M. Rohit / Staff Writer
The Santa Monica City Council returns to action Tuesday with a myriad of issues to consider, ranging from tax law to mixed-use developments and from sustainability to recreation.
Council members will be considering the final designs of the Colorado Esplanade project. Proposed to be built on Colorado Avenue and Fourth Street, the Esplanade intends to be a streetscape project located at the terminus of the Expo Line and the official welcome to downtown Santa Monica for the light rail riders.
City staff estimates the Esplanade will cost $13.5 million to construct. However, City staff and council members will discuss bringing the cost down to $10.7 million by reducing the footprint of the core project.
Three Council members – Gleam Davis, Robert Holbrook, and Kevin McKeown – placed a request on the “Council members Discussion Items” section of the May 14 agenda to support commercial property tax reform. The discussion will focus on Prop. 13 and requiring commercial property owners to reassessed regularly “while maintaining residential property owners’ protections.”
Should Council members agree upon a supporting commercial property tax reform, that position would be made known to lobbyists, state legislators, and Gov. Jerry Brown.
Council members will also be deliberating another development agreement (DA). The latest DA proposal comes from Century West Partners, who seeks to construct a mixed-use development at 1318 Second Street. If approved in its current iteration, the development would be 45 feet high and be four stories tall.
Within the 15,000 square foot project would be 53 residential units, including 28 studios, 19 one-bedrooms, and six two-bedrooms. About 6,664 square feet would be dedicated to ground floor commercial space. The subterranean parking garage would be two levels underground and provide for 66 parking spaces.
Also, City staff will be giving council members an update on the Sustainable Water Master Plan.
Two preferential parking zones will also be discussed on the dais, as well as a resolution to support Move to Amend’s campaign to abolish corporate personhood by amending the U.S. Constitution.
On the consent calendar, Council members will be voting on the purchase of nine police motorcycles and a ride transit program for Santa Monica College students using the Big Blue Bus, among other items.
Comments
May. 15, 2013, 3:33:03 am
Sharon Hagen said...
Yet another proposal for micro-units best serving as pieds-à-terre for vacationers or rabbit hutches for single workers with no home life rather than homes for couples and families. And once again there is NO provision for people to actually OWN their homes. EVER. We are rapidly moving into a new Middle Ages of property owners and indentured serfs, with Santa Monica and San Francisco leading the way though all of Los Angeles is guilty of this shortsighted form of "urban planning" in California. Owning one's own home has always been the main form of accumulating wealth in America.....wealth being a relative term. Without property to sell to finance later years, people are facing a grim future. And while Santa Monica has always had active political participation by it's proportionally large population of renters (of which I am one), property ownership guarantees more say in the way the City is run and more commitment to it due to vested interest. It is high time that larger, not smaller, living units... supportive of family life ...be on offer and that a goodly portion of ALL units be for sale. If the City needs to mandate this as a condition for building in Santa Monica, and if limits on profit need to be proportionally controlled to insure affordability, so be it. To do less is robbing Santa Monica's future as a livable city for residents and insuring an indentured (corporate) population of single worker bees. OH...you say everyone is going to be outside eating in cafes, shopping, and enjoying Santa Monica's "amenities" ..... living their lives outside of their residences, so they won't need as much space ? And they won't need parking spaces because they will all be riding bicycles and taking the Metro (cross town ? really ?) Dream on. Santa Monica is being raped by developers with the cooperation of the Planning Commission, the mayor and the City Council. Great cities are built up slowly, with a variety of architectural styles and indigenous use patterns.....not everything needs to be torn down and rebuilt all at once to satisfy some Utopian urban planning fantasy that succeeds only in a bland corporate sameness that robs the city of its soul..... simultaneously chasing the short -term illusion of "more tax money" rapidly used at the expense of long -term quality of life goals. This needs to stop. We need a moratorium on development and we need it now.