Hannah Heineman
Mirror Staff Writer
The design team chosen by Santa Monica’s City Council for the mixed-use Village that will be constructed as part of the Civic Center Specific Plan (CCSP) hosted an open house to begin obtaining community input on ideas for the Village’s design.
The original CCSP was adopted by the City in 1993 but had to be updated after the City purchased 11.3 acres of the 15-acre RAND property in the Civic Center area in April of 2000. In June 2005 the City Council approved the updated CCSP. The mixed-use Village component will contain residential, commercial and public open space use.
At the open house, The Related Companies of California, approved as the Village’s developer by the Council in January 2006, displayed their conceptual designs of the Village.
A City document available at the open house and derived from the CCSP detailed the guiding values and development strategies used by Related to develop their conceptual designs. These values and strategies were “a development of 325 residences, with a minimum of 160 affordable residences for very-low and low income households. A development that accommodates a wide demographic – from individuals, to large families and live-work spaces suitable for artists. Low and mid-rise buildings that are sensitively scaled to the pedestrian, and that are compatible and closely integrated with a central neighborhood green. A development that has visitor-serving commercial uses on the ground floor frontage of buildings located on Ocean Avenue and Olympic.”
The next step will be a community workshop on June 17 that, according to City documents, will focus on two main issues: “maximum building heights and the appropriate grade for the pedestrian walkway envisioned along 1st Court Alley.”
Input from the open house and the workshop will be presented to the Housing Commission in late June. The City Council will then review a summary of the community input and the Housing Commission’s recommendation during the summer. After their review, an updated design concept will be presented to the community in workshop form so the concept can be further refined. The design concept will return to the appropriate City Commissions then go through both the City’s development and California Coastal Commission review processes.
Other members of the Village Developer-Design Team are the Community Corporation of Santa Monica; Moore, Ruble, Yudell Architects and Planners; Koning Eizenberg Architecture; Pugh + Scarpa Architecture; Mia Lehrer + Associates Landscape Architecture; Hood Design; and public artists Catherine Wagner and Janet Zweig.
