On March 24th, the Beverly Hills Planning Commission (an appointed, quasi-judicial body) heard a zone change request for a development project on a key site near the city’s Western Gateway (seen at right). Located at the sharp, west corner where Wilshire Boulevard and Santa Monica North meet (aka the Starbucks site), the land under the proposed project spans parcels currently zoned either low-intensity commercial (C3) or transportation use (T1).

The prospective project for which the Commissioners heard the zone change request before would present a more intense commercial use for land under the single-story shops along Santa Monica South, as well as the vacant land along Santa Monica North that backs up against those mentioned commercial structures. The proposed project, exhibited in an early, prospective design (left) shows 3-story commercial building with a 2:1 floor-area ratio (calculated by comparing the project’s eventual floor area with to the buildable area of the site).

A Big Change for this High-Profile Block

Compared to the current use for the assembled project parcels, the proposed commercial development would signal a marked change from the unfinished character of the intersection today. Indeed this is a high visibility site. Upon entering Beverly Hills from the West via Wilshire or Santa Monica, it would present itself as one of our city’s more significant commercial projects.

Hence the elevated concern about the zone change and the scale of development on the site.

But there is another reason why this proposed zone change is worthy of bike advocates’ attention: changing the zone would set a precedent for the entirely of the current T-zoned land along the south side of the Santa Monica Boulevard corridor. This project is only one of three contiguous blocks of land that could benefit immediately from changing the zone from T-1 to commercial use. In time, the entire T-zone strip could be claimed for development, precluding future transportation uses. Consequently, Commissioners have been sensitive to precipitous changes in use. This old light rail right-of-way remains undeveloped because policymakers chose not to rezone it in the past.

Precedent-Setting Policy Decisions

The project under discussion in the March meeting is one of three properties (each of which may include multiple individual parcels owned by the same party) that would claim the T-zone for development. And all have a long history with the Planning Commission. This history is relevant because the landowner today is pressuring the city to make good on what he believes were implied promises to allow development, contingent on a series of developer-funded traffic studies (which were completed).

The backstory

The owner purchased this property more than a decade ago and was fully cognizant that the T-1 zone precluded commercial development. This is not at all uncommon in the land development business, where you pay not for the entitled use exactly but what you believe you may be able to develop. It’s about arbitraging the difference between what’s allowed and what you may be able to get allowed.

The thorny problem is the intersection: perennially F-grade, it can’t accommodate additional development through mitigation. Impacts would be impacts. (‘F’ refers to a volume of traffic – or ‘level of service’ in transportation parlance – that exceeds the ability of the intersection to handle it.) This intersection is already failing even without a three-story commercial building on the site.

After all, a zone change is tinkering with established land use policy, and in this case with potentially far-reaching impacts for the entire Santa Monica Boulevard corridor. Changing this property’s T-zone to C-3 would likely have knock-on effects along the entire T-zone strip, the city has resisted making such a change…though not without some ambivalence.

The precedent of turning over land zoned for transportation for everyday development is worrisome both to transportation advocates and to the local community.

Looked at this corridor as a functional connector, maintaining the T-zoning keeps open the possibility of reusing the land once again for transportation use (for example a pedestrian promenade and/or a bicycle route). Just because the light rail is long gone, as one Commissioner said, doesn’t mean that a transportation use is necessarily foreclosed. The string of public garages on the south side of the boulevard were meant to be temporary (30 years later!) until the use of the corridor was resolved.

It’s still not resolved. What most concerns Better Bike is the precedent set by changing the zoning from the T-1 zone (transportation) without a broader prescription for the corridor. We’re thinking about what transportation means for the larger Westside going forward.

Local Impacts are Feared

If the city’s desired use for this land and the rest of the T-zoned parcels is unclear, the concerns of the local community adjacent to this parcel is not so ambiguous. Residents seem attached to the low-rise commercial buildings, and indeed the General Plan identified this area as a possible gallery district – with a consequent boost in local property values.

Related is the loss of control that the city would experience should C-3 zoning be adopted here. At present, there is an opportunity to craft a zone that would accommodate commercial uses at the city’s discretion, giving it an ongoing say in the scale, massing, and character of new structures. That is key when we think about the importance of setbacks from the lot line, for example, or the quality of design that is appropriate for the city’s western gateway.

Then there is the fear of an influx of auto traffic should the city allow a relatively outsized commercial project to proceed. This is a relatively narrow site with definite design challenges. Squeezing in sufficient floor area means building vertically, the developer suggests. But that comes at a cost to the neighborhood’s current low-rise character.

Moreover, should the C-3 zone be adopted for this land, the developer would enjoy greater latitude under ‘by right’ allowances. As long as his project conforms to the C-3 zone, the city has no leverage to demand additional concessions.

Getting It Right: Let’s Think Outside the Box

Concessions are the name of the game! For advocates who see non-motor transportation as the future of Westside travel, and who see Beverly Hills as an under-realized mecca for individual people-powered transport, consigning this intersection to a double-F grade (no such grade exists but we may need it!) is unacceptable. Why not incorporate a new way of thinking about moving people, and not only cars, though one of the Westside’s most chronically-clogged intersections?

For matter, why settle for ordinary (if palatable) structures when new ways of moving pedestrians and bikes can be incorporated right into the structure of the project itself? Viewing the presentation prepared by the applicant, the challenges were clear but so was a possible solution: internalize a bike/ped transportation corridor right into projects built on the T-zone. Something outside the box like NYC’s High Line (above) or Paris’s Promenade Plantee (below) come to mind – urban spaces that cast a fresh light on moving people.

These examples reuse relict transportation rail infrastructure (thing Rails-to-Trails) but there is no reason why we can’t envison and demand that new projects incorporate new modes of people-powered transit right into their very bones. With the C-3 zone change, the city loses leverage. Persuading the city to retain the T-zone, or to develop an ‘overlay zone,’ or specifically-tailored special use zone, as Commissioners suggested, on the other hand, would be a way to retain a measure of control and secure truly imaginative projects that suggest the future of transportation beyond the car.

Next Stop: City Council

The intelligent and animated discussion before the Planning Commissioners in this March meeting raised policy concerns of such import that landowners, city officials, and elected leadership agreed to meet in April to continue a higher-level discussion.

[Update: Several months later, the Council has not yet moved to resolve the issue.]