If you live in Santa Monica and have ever wondered why the city seems to have so little control over what gets built near the beach, the answer traces back to a bureaucratic failure that occurred before many current residents arrived. It has never been fixed. That failure is now being used to justify legislation that would permanently reshape the coastal zone.
The 1992 problem that never went away
Every California coastal city is required to have a Local Coastal Program, essentially a rulebook governing what can be built near the water. The rulebook has two parts: a Land Use Plan that sets overall policy and an Implementation Plan that translates those policies into actual zoning law.
In 1992, Santa Monica submitted both to the California Coastal Commission for approval. The Commission certified the Land Use Plan. It rejected the Implementation Plan.
That left the city in bureaucratic limbo that has persisted ever since. Without a certified Implementation Plan, Santa Monica has no independent permitting authority over coastal development. Every project near the water requires approval from both City Hall and the state, a dual process that adds time, cost, and uncertainty few other California coastal cities face. For thirty-three years, the problem went unresolved.
The second attempt
In 2016, the city tried again. Planners drafted an updated Land Use Plan over several years, held community meetings, modeled sea level rise, and mapped view corridors. The City Council unanimously adopted it in 2018. It went to the Coastal Commission for certification.
The sticking point, as in 1992, was the Implementation Plan. Santa Monica’s proposed zoning would allow far more density and height than the Commission would sanction.
California’s density bonus laws let developers stack affordability incentives on top of one another, unlocking significant height increases for housing projects. Applied in the coastal zone, those bonuses can produce buildings far taller than the Commission would accept, particularly on corridors like Ocean, Wilshire, Colorado, San Vicente Boulevard, and Santa Monica Boulevard, where multifamily zoning already exists, and land values are high.
The Coastal Commission requires height limits along mapped sight lines to the ocean, helping residents living further inland to see the coast and the ocean and enjoy ocean breezes. Those limits directly reduce project value in a city where added height near the water translates into real money. Local elected officials, facing pressure from developers and housing advocates alike, have never written those restrictions into law in a form the Commission would accept. Today’s Council majority favors intense densification of the areas within the city’s Coastal Zone.
A senior city planner said it plainly during the 2016 Planning Commission hearings: if the city and the Commission couldn’t reach an agreement, Santa Monica would end up right back where it was in 1992. That is exactly what happened.
The legislative end run
AB 1740, introduced by Assemblymember Rick Zbur and co-sponsored by the city of Santa Monica, takes a different approach to the thirty-three-year deadlock. Instead of drafting zoning rules, the Commission will certify; it simply removes the Commission from most of the process.
Under the bill, local government (and only Santa Monica’s government) could approve mixed-income multifamily housing, building renovations, parking restructuring, and sweeping transportation changes without independent Commission oversight. The city co-sponsored the legislation without a formal City Council vote, attaching Santa Monica’s name and its Sacramento lobbying resources to the bill with no agenda item, no public hearing, and no notification to the residents, business owners, or conservation organizations that have spent decades protecting this stretch of coastline.
At the legislative hearing, Councilmember Dan Hall testified that developers told him projects frequently stall in coastal review, discouraging investment. Opponents, including the Surfrider Foundation and the Coastal Commission itself, argued the bill creates overly broad exemptions, weakens oversight, and could undermine public access and environmental protections. They also noted that Santa Monica should instead complete its Local Coastal Program. No other California coastal city would lose Commission oversight under the bill.
The multifamily exemption and what it actually means for renters
The bill’s housing provisions warrant more scrutiny than they have received. California’s density bonus laws were designed to produce affordable housing. Stacked bonuses produce something else. A project can double in size while adding a handful of income-restricted units. The rest are market-rate. Under AB 1740, that math moves into the coastal zone.
That calculus falls hardest on neighborhoods like Wilmont, the area bounded roughly by Wilshire and Montana, Ocean, and 4th Street. The coastal zone within those boundaries contains a substantial concentration of rent-controlled units. Many of those tenants are elderly, disabled, or have lived in their apartments for decades. Under the Ellis Act, landlords who choose to exit the rental market are legally permitted to displace those tenants, with mandated payments but no right of return. A redeveloped building that replaces a rent-controlled apartment with a market-rate unit has done nothing the law prohibits. The Council majority, in co-sponsoring this legislation with no public notification or input from residents, appears to have accepted that outcome.
Next week, Part 2: What the bill actually does, what recent amendments change, the public backlash against the measure, and the city’s fallback plan in case the measure fails in Sacramento.
Daniel Jansenson, Architect, for S.M.a.r.t.: Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Dan Jansenson, Architect, (former Building & Fire-Life Safety Commissioner); Robert H. Taylor, Architect AIA; Mario Fonda-Bonardi, Architect AIA (former Planning Commissioner); Sam Tolkin, Architect, (former Planning Commissioner); Michael Jolly ARE-CRE; Jack Hillbrand AIA, Landmarks Commission Architect; Phil Brock (SM Mayor, ret.); Matt Hoefler, Architect NCARB; Heather Thomason, community organizer, Charles Andrews columnist. journalist.
