Subway-to-the... VA Hospital?

According to Metro's latest round of community update meetings, the so-called Subway-to-the-Sea rail extension to Santa Monica is simply "out of the realm of funding feasibility," as is the spur joining Hollywood and Highland to the Wilshire route via Santa Monica Blvd. We knew Villaraigosa's 30-10 initiative was too good to be true. But look at the bright side, thanks to Measure R spending, construction on the subway line could begin as soon as the end of 2011.

Initially, construction of the first phase would terminate at a station in Westwood near Wilshire Blvd. But after suggestions by locals, project planners found that a 1-stop extension beyond the 405 to the Veterans Administration campus would indeed return higher ridership and decrease traffic congestion under the freeway. Beyond the VA however, ridership estimates decrease with every successive station, meaning dwindled fiscal feasibility. While Subway-to-the-Sea certainly has a nice ring to it, there simply isn't enough demand in the Santa Monica area to warrant an expensive underground rail construction, especially considering that the Expo phase 2 light rail extension to Santa Monica is already approved and will be completed far sooner than any phase on the Wilshire route. The UCLA area is home to the city's second largest job center outside of Downtown and will benefit enormously from the traffic relief and increased mobility brought by a more expedient subway extension.

As for the Santa Monica Blvd spur, the connection between Hollywood and Beverly Hills will make sense in the future, but right now that stretch also doesn't support the critical building density that would make a subway line pencil out. But as long as the City of West Hollywood continues its hungry, authoritarian concessions to big name developers, the Santa Monica Blvd corridor may well get its subway.

This Just In: Broad eyes Downtown for museum

All of Downtown has been abuzz this week after billionaire developer/philanthropist Eli Broad officially announced that a Grand Ave site is also under consideration for his $60 million art museum and foundation headquarters. Just last week, we reported that a strange site in Culver City was Broad's elusive third choice. But the President of neighboring West LA College has heard nothing from Broad's people, so that revelation may have been a distraction.

Broad obviously has very strong ties to--and friends in--Downtown, from his support of the lingering Grand Ave behemoth to his recent $30m bailout of MOCA. Impatient with developer Related Co.'s inability to get things going on Grand Ave, Councilwoman Jan Perry has expressed excitement at the prospect of Broad moving in nearby. The site under consideration is a surface parking lot on the south side of Disney Hall, sunken below street level on Grand Ave. The lot is one of the smaller parcels owned by Related Co., a developer that has been hit hard by the real estate setback, and is waiting for the capital market to rebound before plowing forward. Related would likely get an extension on their city-mandated deadline to break ground if some of the land is sold to Broad's project.

The City of Los Angeles was initially left out of consideration for the museum. In old age and frustrated by a lifetime of red tape, Broad is desperate to expedite this project as much as possible. But Santa Monica's city council isn't voting on the deal until next month - a time frame that may prove to hurt their bid. Some Santa Monicans argue however that the city is offering too many concessions to bring Broad's museum to the derelict Civic Park neighborhood (selling the land for $1, for example); they believe a much better deal can be reached via a developer who has commercial plans for the site. Meanwhile, Beverly Hills, who doesn't even own the property Broad wants, might as well kiss its chances good bye.

Source: Santa Monica Daily Press; Photo: Eric Richardson

Santa Monica plans second freeway cap park

Santa Monica City Council approved a proposal to cap an additional portion of the 10 freeway on Tuesday. This second cap park would be over the freeway slot between Ocean Ave and 4th St. The decision comes just months after another park was approved over the Santa Monica Freeway between 14th and 17th Sts. But that project is still in early feasibility stages. This latest development brings the number of LA area freeway cap parks under consideration to 4 - the others over the 101 in Hollywood and Downtown.

City leaders hope a park bridge over this section of the freeway would help create a stronger pedestrian connection between the Third Street shopping area, the pier, and the newly revitalizing civic center. The freeway segment is already conveniently "cut" about 20 ft below ground, but is still exposed to the open air. At Ocean Ave, the freeway briefly tunnels below Ocean Park and the entrance to the pier, before emerging again as the Pacific Coast Highway along the beach. By extending the tunneled portion of the freeway, both parks might also benefit from larger green spaces and greater pedestrian access. The park would also be convenient to the Expo light rail station planned for Colorado Ave and 4th St.

The approval allows spending of ~$300,000 for a feasibility study and ~$3m for initial engineering. Local planning and engineering firm AECOM is charged with conducting the preliminary study and will present its findings to the council within 3 months. The park has been a pipe dream of the city's since at least 1999.

The added land, which is in the super-prime center of Santa Monica, would be more valuable than the cost of capping the freeway. Besides the obvious mitigation of the visual and aural impacts of the freeway, and the shifting of transportation priority from freeways to public transit, projects like this are significant case studies in the frontier of "land creation." As suburban sprawl has lost its appeal in the aftermath of recent economic and environmental events, developers are looking to disprove the old adage 'you can't build more land.' Freeways occupy huge expanses of our built environment, often in inefficient ways. Where freeways have been dug below ground, or where they pass through expensive land, there can be innumerable benefits from capping or reclaiming that ugly and wasteful infrastructure. Santa Monica's experiments should be watched closely by civic leaders and developers everywhere.

Source: Santa Monica Daily Press

Culver City enters running for Broad art museum site

In an interview last week, billionaire developer and philanthropist Eli Broad revealed that a 10 acre site in Culver City is also under consideration for the location of a new museum that would be endowed in his name. When Broad announced plans for the museum back in November of 2008, a site at the southeast corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire Blvds in Beverly Hills was the principle consideration. A year ago however, Broad announced that he was also looking at a 2.5 acre city-owned lot next to Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium. The Culver City site is located along Jefferson Blvd on the West LA College campus.

Broad's revelation was shocking to all, but perhaps more so to Mark Rocha, West LA College's president, who says that he hasn't heard from Broad's foundation. After reading about the competition between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills last year, Rocha wrote the foundation, asking them to consider his site as well. Unfortunately that vacant lot is currently being used as a staging area for the college's capital construction project, and will likely be in use for another 2 years.

But Broad says that at age 76, he wants the project to move fast, with as little red tape as possible. While Santa Monica already owns its site in question, the City of Beverly Hills would have to acquire the parcel that Broad has been eyeing. And whichever city gets the honor of landing Broad's museum would be asked to donate the land, contribute $1m+ in construction fees, provide parking, and pay for landscaping. It is a pricey investment that each municipality believes will be well worth the prestige and popularity of the Broad collection. While Broad has said he is not trying to pit each city against the other to generate the best deal, he is probably selecting jurisdictions based on their ability to expedite the bureaucratic process. The City of Los Angeles, notably but not surprisingly, is not on Broad's short list.

The 50,000 sf facility is to house Broad's 2000 piece art collection, his foundation, storage space, and a research component. The museum would be launched by a $200m endowment, said to sustain a $12m/year operating budget. That bequest would be the largest infusion into Southern California arts, second only to the $2.76b Getty Trust. It is estimated to cost ~$60m.

Source: LA Times

Navigating the LA Housing Market

Don't let double-digit unemployment and a frozen credit market fool you - some LA neighborhoods are doing just fine, thank you. And you might be surprised by the areas that are doing particularly badly. How has the recession affected gentrifying neighborhoods and the up-and-comers? And are the super-rich truly still recession-proof? Los Angeles Magazine has just published a chart detailing homes sold, median selling price, and price per square foot for every imaginable LA area neighborhood between 2007 and 2008. The list can be quite daunting so herewith, a summary of the notables.

Most houses sold in 2008: Lancaster (93536) 1,458

Least houses sold in 2008: Downtown (90021) 16

Highest median price in 2008: Beverly Hills (90210) $2,690,000

Lowest median price in 2008: Lancaster (93535) $155,000

Highest price/sf in 2008: Santa Monica (90402) $984

Lowest price/sf in 2008: Lancaster (93535) $88

Biggest gainer from 2007: Westwood (90024) +17.9%
Biggest loser from 2007: Watts (90002) -49.0%

Wow. It is certainly an interesting time to be owning (or building) in Lancaster. Despite nearly halving in value from the year before, houses were still getting scooped up there last year thanks to drop-dead prices, which were lower even than Compton or Watts. But those inner city neighborhoods were by far the biggest losers from the year over. Their central location gives them artificially high prices during boom years. Beverly Hills and Malibu topped out the price index as can be expected. And Santa Monica's dense zoning and oceanfront location gave it the highest price per square foot. Despite sluggish movement in Downtown, the 90021 zip still managed a double digit increase from 2007. And the combination of density and stability stemming from proximity to UCLA, is the only explanation for Westwood's freakish mini-boom.

Santa Monica Demos Parking in Favor of Greener Alternative

Parking structures at 1200 4th St. and 1400 2nd St. will be demolished in accordance with a $1 million spending package approved by Santa Monica's City Council Tuesday night. As part of a contract with construction firm Morley Builders, two larger, "greener" structures will take their place. The new structures will incorporate solar power, ground floor retail, bike parking, and public restrooms. They will also increase capacity by 250 cars each.

The two structures, which are the smallest of the area's six city-owned structures, were built as part of the city's plan to attract downtown retailers by eliminating parking requirements. The arrangement has been extremely successful, especially at Third Street Promenade, where high-end retailers clamor to lease the pricey spots. It has also led to a dense, walkable downtown that isn't plagued by unsightly ground parking like so many other Southern California shopping districts. Long a practitioner of so-called smart parking, Santa Monica is also home to a new parking structure at its civic center, so innovative and handsome it has been featured in a spread of Architectural Record.

Also on the voting sheet Tuesday night was an option to increase the city's bandwidth to bolster WiFi hot spot coverage. With its small area and fat pockets, Santa Monica may well be the first Southern California municipality to offer citywide wireless coverage, so far a distinction claimed only by Google's Bay Area hometown of Mountain View.

Santa Monica Place Reopening Further Delayed

Santa Monica Place, the unfortunate early-Gehry-designed covered shopping mall that anchors the southern end of the Third Street Promenade, has delayed its reopening even further into 2010. The Macerich Company is the developer on the remodel, and announced this week an "official" opening date of August 6, 2010 - significantly later than the earlier planned Spring 2010 and 2009 before that.

The company, which purchased the property in 1999, originally planned to raze the existing mall and replace it with a multi-use complex of condos, offices, and retail. This 2004 plan was met with strong opposition from locals however, who felt the megalomaniacal development would be out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood and worsen already bad beach and promenade traffic. In 2007, they modified the proposal to a simple reconfiguration of the existing mall, which was ardently supported by the community.

While construction on the site looks horrendous, the project really is just a glamorized remodel. The interior walkways have been gutted and will be replaced by open-air walkways. Also new will be an indoor/outdoor rooftop dining terrace a la Westfield Century City but more upscale. Locals and visitors will be happy to see what was once a depressing, placeless mall turned into a welcoming promenade-like shopping center more in tune with Santa Monica weather and culture. And through adaptive reuse to boot. Expect to pay for it though - anchor tenants Macy's and Robinson's May have been replaced with Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom.

Metro Board Chooses Right-of-Way Option in Expo Phase II

The Metro and Expo authority boards voted unanimously last week in favor of the Metro-owned Exposition right-of-way route for the second phase of the Expo light rail connecting downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. That route follows the rail line that was used by the Pacific Electric red car system that was eradicated in the 1950s. The option is cheaper, faster, more convenient, and would attract higher ridership than the alternative.

Opposition to this route came from residents of the Cheviot Hills area directly to the north of the Exposition right-of-way. That neighborhood is composed predominantly of upscale, single-family homes. Residents have voiced concerns that the light-rail line would be noisy, ugly, and would bring urban blight to the plush region. They tried in vain to convince the board that a route traveling westward on Venice Blvd and then turning northward up Sepulveda Blvd would attract more riders.

The other half of the decision was to route the terminal stretch of the line down Colorado Ave through downtown Santa Monica to end at Ocean Ave at the Pier, as opposed to running down Olympic Blvd. Now, the principle remaining controversy is whether certain stations should remain at-grade or be sunken underground - the safer but more expensive alternative. The construction authority has proposed at-grade stations at Overland, Westwood, Military, Sepulveda, Barrington and Centinela, some of which are high-traffic crossings.

First Century City, then the 10 freeway and now this? Cheviot Hills just can't seem to keep the big, bad city from closing in around it.

Weary of the 10, Santa Monica Proposes to Bury Freeway Under Park

The City of Santa Monica last week authorized a petition of $250,000 to the state for the feasibility study of covering I-10 between 14th and 17th streets with a park. The intention of the move is to add more green space to the city, mitigate the presence of the freeway, and bridge some of the neighborhood rifts created by the introduction of the freeway in 1964. The section of freeway in question is bounded by Memorial Park, a small municipal park, to the north, and the Woodlawn Cemetery to the south.

New freeway construction was extremely controversial in the US in the middle half of the last century, as it replaced gigantic swaths of homes and sometimes entire neighborhoods. But the US Interstate system was relentless in its goal of linking the nation's cities. Support for the futuristic network of roads was often even enthusiastic, especially during wartime. But the City of Santa Monica has long resented the presence of the freeway in its city limits - it brings high-speed outsiders to the upscale beachside community.

Sooner or later the city has to realize that, despite its 90,000, it sits at the core of the nation's second biggest metro area. The freeway is an important connector of the city's business district and Pac Coast Hwy with central LA and the rest of Southern California. But anyway, hiding the freeway under a park isn't a bad idea. It will create a large contiguous greenspace with its approx. 7 added acres. It will create a "land bridge" that will be much more pleasant for pedestrians to cross than a typical overpass. And it will begin to break up the dominating repetitiveness of the "grayscape." But it might be expensive. The City of Los Angeles has determined the cost of a similar park over the 101 in Hollywood to be around $1 billion.