City’s New Urban Designer Talks Shop

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

May 5 – If the City Council eliminates much of the public’s input by allowing staff to approve development projects that meet prescribed guidelines, many of the key design decisions will rest on the shoulders of Stephanie Reich, the City’s new urban designer.

Born and raised in the "monotonous" suburbs of New York City, Reich found her calling during visits to the metropolis, whose "vitality" and "urban life" sparked her interest in architecture when she was a teenager.

“I was very inspired by New York City,” Reich recalled. “I grew up in the suburbs, and they were fairly monotonous... Suburbs are fairly boring environments.”

After obtaining a BA degree in architecture from Cornell University, where she graduated with honors in 1986, Reich traveled to Thailand, Japan and China, returning in 1989 to practice with small private firms in Philadelphia and New York City.

“I felt very significantly impacted by the physical spaces that I lived in, that I inhabited, and I felt like I would make a great contribution if I could impact that environment in a positive way,” Reich said.

Reich moved to Los Angeles in 1991 to attend graduate school at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where she received a Master’s Degree. She now lives in an apartment in Venice.

In the back recesses of City Hall, through the planning department's maze of
meeting rooms and work areas, Reich sat in a sparsely decorated office and
answered questions about her new role in helping to shape the way Santa Monica will look for generations to come.

Q: Can you tell me about your job as urban designer in Santa Monica.

A: I have a number of areas of responsibilities. I lead the architectural review board team, as well as the landmarks commission team…. In addition to leading my teams, there’s design review. We have been meeting with applicants to help them improve their submittal package, and to address design concerns and focus on bulk and form that are of greatest interest to the community and that have previously been defined in guidelines adopted by the City, as well as by comments we consistently hear at the ARB meetings and the Planning Commission.

We are very clear about being style neutral in our review of projects, so as not to promote a single person’s taste and predilection. Within each and every style and design concept, what I view as my job is to help the architect to point out where their design is maybe less consistent with their overall idea and intention.

Q: If you had to tell the person on the street what your job is, what would you say?

A: I see myself as providing a bridge between the community and the development interests.

Q: Do you agree that if these proposed standards go into effect that your role would become more important? (The proposed regulations would boost the size of projects that are approved by staff from 7,500 to 30,000-sqare feet, and to 60,000 square feet for projects that are primarily residential, if they meet design standards set by the council.)

A: I don’t think my role will substantially change… The intent (of the ordinances) is that the public process focus is on the policy rather than on each and every specific development. So by having the public review focus on the policy there will be a clearer understanding of the public interests by the public of what the (development) requirements are. I don’t foresee there being less public input because (the ordinances) would shift the focus onto the overall policy.

Q: What about the specific design on individual projects? Would there be less public input on those?

A: Currently if a project is within a certain… threshold, it doesn’t go before the planning commission. It simply allows the public input and review to be on the policy level.

Q: How many (staff) team members do you work with?

A: Five total.

Q: If (the new regulations) pass the City Council would your team expand?

A: That remains to be seen. I doubt that will happen because the role… doesn’t really shift or change or enlarge.

Q: One of the things that the audit of the planning department has been focused on is that seven out of 22 planning positions are not filled yet. Does that affect your efficiency as a department?

A: With fewer people, everyone has a larger workload. We are always focused on maintaining our target timeframe, but with fewer people, there’s a point where it’s harder and harder to reach those targets. We’re actively doing more recruitment, so hopefully it will get better.

Q: If the guidelines are passed and your workload increases, would the level of efficiency drop off even further?

A: It’s hard for me to predict what is the universe of projects that would not go before the planning commission. It’s hard to predict how many of the projects would comply with those standards and go before the ARB… We’ll always review projects for compliance. Projects that go before boards and commissions have the additional work of not only enduring that review, but also preparing a staff report and any appeals. So we anticipate there’s potential that there will be fewer staff reports. Another thing that may or may not have been in the audit (of the planning department) is that currently the large majority of the time spent by us is in the day-to-day planning

Q: Ninety-five percent of all your time is spent on handling permits and such according to Matrix (the firm conducting the audit).

A: Right, according to them, that’s higher than it should be in relation to forward thinking, forward policy planning. So the upside of having those processes more streamlined – there’s a lot of positive aspects to that – applicants can have a more predictable, more efficient process, yet still undergo the same level of review.

Q: Why aren’t people flocking to Santa Monica to take these planning positions?

A: Oh, people are! We have an enormous amount of people applying for those positions. In the recent past that I’ve been here, people have chosen to leave the department for a variety of reasons: personal reasons, style choices etc., because not everyone can afford to live here.

Q: Would one of those reasons be that the work environment is not as desirable as some would like it to be?

A: I don’t believe that’s the case. There have actually been a few people who have left because they were commuting long distances and they did that for years, but then found something else. The planning department is a public agency and because we have a very public process for recruitment, it takes four to six months to fill a position. So there’s a gap.

Q: Is the planning department close to filling those positions then?

A: We’re actively doing recruitment for three different levels of planners. So we’re doing that recruitment and are hoping those positions will be filled soon. We have a lot of qualified people applying… You could assume that something may be wrong if we are at 70 percent of the staffing, but that’s not the case. Most of my almost 20 years of experience has been in the private sector, and I find the atmosphere here delightful.

Q: Some would say things in the planning department have been kind of a shambles, such as how long it takes for projects to be approved, or that applicants have to visit with multiple people. What have you brought here to improve those conditions?

A: The role of the urban designer was conceived in order to improve the design review process…and meet with the applicants to address any concerns preliminarily so that that would be a much easier discussion by the ARB… So what I’ve been doing is having a descriptive analysis, a brief analysis, but also the design analysis, which by the way is not subjective. It really focuses on what are the broad concepts of the design, how the design responds to issues that are important to the community.

Q: Are there specific buildings you like or dislike in Santa Monica?

A: I prefer not to go there.

Q: Is there or is there not one area of town that you like or dislike?

A: As soon as you cross over the border from Santa Monica to Los Angeles on Lincoln Boulevard, you notice in Los Angeles there is a proliferation of signs in a way that you don’t see in Santa Monica. Signage is much more heavily regulated here than elsewhere… you can see the positive aspect of that regulation.

Q: How about buildings? What is too high, or too dense?

A: Well, I think that just as in everything in the world, everything is relative. I think height needs to be considered along with its context, which means what’s the width of the street… If you go to areas in the world that are much older, you’ll see much more narrowed and much more extreme proportion… So height, as it affects the environment in the public way; the beauty that air and light lets in, I’m not concerned about what’s been happening to date with height.

Q: Is there any particular building that you particularly like?

There was a project approved by the ARB on Arcadia (Terrace facing the beach south of the pier). That one was extremely wedded to its landscape, to the buildings around it in scale and proportion. It was kept to a certain height in order to have respect for its neighbors. There was a very modern building in an eclectic neighborhood, with some craftsman behind. Yet it was so well suited to the environment. That’s a really good example. I don’t like to hold projects over one another. There is no best in architecture. What we’re taught is that it can always be better, yet often the fees run out (she laughs.)

One other thing, some people who are not trained in architecture think that architecture is a completely subjective endeavor, and I would disagree with that. There are some basic principles of architecture and design that for designers govern the design decisions, as well as pragmatic decisions. Although my designs have always been of a contemporary nature, not everything I review is like that, and it’s not my intention to impose my own subject views. That’s not my job. My job is to help improve any project on its own terms.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to flesh out that we’ve discussed?

At this particular time in Santa Monica… there is such pressure to create essentially that next level of urban development, the challenge to us is to continue to build to support the infrastructure and the projected increase in population and demographics.

Essentially we’ve got a building envelope that is not built out, so we’re at a transitional point where the older development pattern is being brought face to face with the maximum allowed by the building envelope which is, in the recent past and currently, what is shaping development.

When I talk about being focused on issues of scale and proportion, one of the issues that I’m concerned with is looking at new developments and how it relates to other developments in the neighborhood and particularly the older developments that may be right up against it.

Q: What message would you give future applicants?