Three months ago, this column asked a simple question about the Santa Monica Airport Conversion Project: Where, exactly, would the money come from? The City’s own Airport Conversion Project identifies “Balance Economics” as one of its Guiding Principles, stating that project capital costs should be linked to a reliable funding source. At the time, none had been identified.
State Senator Ben Allen and Santa Monica officials recently celebrated what was described as a $10 million Proposition 4 investment for the Airport Conversion Project. The City’s website proclaimed that the project had “won state investment.” Mayor Torosis called it “a meaningful step toward realizing what Santa Monica has long envisioned for this land,” while Senator Allen described the funding as “transformative.”
Residents could reasonably conclude that California had committed substantial funding toward construction of Santa Monica’s airport park concept. But the public record does not yet support that conclusion.
The legislation tells a more nuanced story.
The relevant language appears in the 2025 Budget Act, Section 112, Item 3790-102-6093, as amended by AB 107 earlier this year. It appropriates funding through the California Department of Parks and Recreation to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC). Within that, appropriation appears a single sentence:
“$10,000,000 is available for the restoration, rehabilitation, protection, and capital improvement of former airport lands to create parks and open space.”
The statute does not identify Santa Monica as the recipient. It does not mention Santa Monica Airport, reference the Airport Conversion Project, or establish that the City has received a grant award.
I asked Senator Allen’s office how Santa Monica obtained the funding. Their response was straightforward: “It was line-itemed in one of last year’s budget bills…There was no application process.”
This was not a grant Santa Monica competed for and won. It was a legislative appropriation establishing an eligible funding category. Elsewhere in the same budget, projects such as Sepulveda Basin, Eaton Canyon, Charles White Park, and Rosemead Park are identified by name. Here, however, the Legislature chose broader language: former airport lands.
That distinction matters. It goes to the heart of whether these funds are available to Santa Monica for SMO, and on the timetable specified.
Santa Monica Airport remains an operating, FAA-certificated airport and, under the City’s Consent Decree with the FAA, cannot legally close before January 1, 2029, and even then, closure is optional, not mandatory. Yet this appropriation applies only to former airport lands, while the funds must be encumbered or spent by June 30, 2028. As of this writing, no subsequent budget amendment appears to have extended that deadline.
Those are not minor details. They define what qualifies for the grant, what the money may be used for, and the timeline in which it must be used.
The City’s announcement explains that part of the funding will support feasibility studies and environmental review. Those activities can certainly occur while the airport remains open. Environmental analysis, engineering studies, and conceptual design are all legitimate planning functions.
But planning a park is not building a park, and the appropriation authorizes restoration, rehabilitation, protection, and capital improvement—language ordinarily associated with physical improvements rather than preliminary studies. If the Legislature intended the money primarily for planning activities before an airport closed, it could easily have said so.
Santa Monica residents have seen this distinction before. More than eleven years ago, the City retained RIOS to prepare plans for the 12-acre Airport Park Expansion. Extensive public outreach was conducted. Attractive renderings were produced. Conceptual designs were approved.
Eleven years later, virtually none of those proposed improvements have been built, and the 12 acres sit as empty fenced asphalt, devoid of any promised improvements. The reason is painfully familiar. No funds available. Planning documents are not construction projects.
Attractive renderings are not capital improvements. Calling land a future park is not the same as funding one.
This current appropriation also reflects a broader legislative pattern that SMa.r.t. has examined in recent columns.
AB 1740 and the City’s Local Coastal Program update were presented primarily as measures to improve coastal access, bicycle circulation, and pedestrian connectivity. Yet the statutory language revisions and subsequent ‘trailer’ bill language links housing and arguably reaches well beyond those objectives to influence future use of airport property via bicycle access, pedestrian connectivity, transit linkages, and multimodal circulation paths. While the $10mil appropriation is written for former airport lands, the public announcements understandably leave many residents believing Santa Monica has already secured construction funding for an Airport Conversion Project. In both instances, the governing documents are more nuanced than the accompanying political narrative surrounding them and suggest a lack of clarity.
That observation is not an accusation. Legislatures occasionally write broad statutes that establish categories rather than naming individual projects. Press releases naturally emphasize their hoped-for outcomes. But the legal documents establish what government is actually authorized to do. Citizens deserve to understand the difference.
And there is another unresolved issue that remains as part of the funding question.
As previous SMa.r.t. columns have explained, closure of the airport raises separate questions under California’s Surplus Land Act. If portions of the property are later leased for qualifying non-agency purposes—including certain long-term educational uses permitted under Measure LC— it may trigger statutory procedures requiring priority negotiations for affordable housing. Whether those provisions ultimately apply depends on future decisions, but they remain part of the larger legal and financial picture surrounding airport conversion.
This is not an argument against parks. It is an argument for precision and transparency.
The Legislature appropriated money for the restoration and capital improvement of former airport lands. Santa Monica Airport cannot legally become former airport land before that appropriation expires. Those appear to be matters of public record.
If Santa Monica has received a formal $10mil grant award from the SMMC, the public should be able to review the application, award documents, funding conditions, eligible expenditures, deadlines, and implementation requirements. If additional approvals remain necessary before funds become available, residents deserve to know that as well. Public confidence is strengthened when governments explain not only what they state or claim will happen, but what the governing documents actually provide for and require.
That has been the common thread running through recent debates over AB 1740, the Local Coastal Program, and now this Proposition 4 appropriation. In each case, the legislation deserves to be read as carefully as the headlines announcing it.
Santa Monica residents should expect nothing less than complete transparency. The City should release the documents, explain the conditions, and show exactly how this appropriation is qualified for, and how it can be used, before telling residents that it is money in the bank. This isn’t Washington, is it?
Bob Taylor, AlA for SMa.r.t.
Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Dan Jansenson, Architect, (ex-Building & Fire-Life Safety Commissioner); Robert H.Taylor, Architect AlA; Mario Fonda-Bonardi, Architect AlA (ex-Planning Commissioner); Sam Tolkin, Architect, (ex-Planning Commissioner); MichaelJolly ARE-CRE; Jack Hillbrand AIA, Landmarks Commissioner Architect; Matt Hoefler, Architect NCARB; Charles Andrews, Journalist/columnist; Bruce Leddy, Human Services Commissioner and NOMA Co-Chair.
For previous articles, see www.santamonicaarcn.wordoress.com/wruno
