Community to Begin Shaping Plans for Santa Monica Place Sunday

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

March 9 -- Santa Monica residents will get their first chance this weekend to put on a developer’s hat and dream up plans to remake Santa Monica Place.

The City and the owners of the struggling indoor mall will kick off a series of public workshops Sunday afternoon that will give residents a chance to start with a blank slate for the 10-acre Downtown site.

"You're going to be able to sit with your neighbors in groups and decide how to use the land," Assistant City Manger Gordon Anderson told Sunset Park residents at a neighborhood meeting last week.

Workshop participants will look at land use options and play a "land use game," Anderson said.

They will weigh in on a host of issues, including the amounts and kinds of retail space, housing, office space, public parking and pedestrian areas they would like to see, Anderson added.

The workshop comes one month after the City Council directed the Macerich Company -- which owns the mall -- to scrap a proposed plan that called for an outdoor shopping venue topped with three 21-story condo towers, an apartment building and an office complex.

"Twenty-one stories is definitely off the table," Macerich Vice President Randy Brant told residents at the Friends of Sunset Park’s monthly meeting last Wednesday night.

Although residents were not given a chance to weigh in on the project, they were given a glimpse of the community process that will begin Sunday.

The information gathered at the workshops will be evaluated by City staff, Macerich officials and consultants, who will then craft a set of alternatives that will be presented in a second round of workshops, Anderson told the two-dozen residents.

In addition, there will be ten smaller meetings, including one with the Bayside District Corporation, which operates the Downtown, Anderson said, adding that he expects the public input period to last about seven months.

During the discussion, one resident compared the workshop process to "building your house, where you meet with an architect and give him your wish list." The architect then comes back and tells you what you can afford, the resident said.

Many agreed with this comparison.

But others worried that residents would be given too little information to make good decisions.

Friends of Sunset Park President Zina Josephs was critical when she learned that residents would be presented with building options without being able to see the price tags.

Although Macerich will foot the bill to redevelop its eight acres of the retail space, the City will bear the cost of replacing its public parking structures -- which sit on the remaining two acres -- with underground parking.

"I think it's manipulative to make it a game without hard economic (figures)," Josephs told Anderson, adding that there must be some estimate of what replacing the parking will cost.

"We want to know what's that going to be," said Josephs. "We need to know where that money is going to come from."

But Anderson replied that the City didn't want the workshop participants' vision to be blinded by dollar signs and that it is too difficult to estimate costs, given all the variables, this early in the game.

After the meeting, Tom Cleys, the neighborhood group’s vice president, said he looks forward to participating in the workshops.

"The process sounds good,” Cleys said. “The proof will be in the outcome."

The first workshop will be held Sunday, March 13 between 2 and 5 p.m. at Santa Monica Place and will include a tour of the site.

Additional workshops will be held on March 14 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Grant School; March 17 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Franklin School, and March 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. at John Adams Middle School.

Those unable to attend the workshops can fill out a survey questionnaire from the City.

For more information about the workshops visit www.santa-monica.org