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Posted Mar 4, 2008, 5:02 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,707
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DowntownCharlieBrown
but there seems to be a rush to jump on the band wagon by all the outlets to report "The End of Park 5th and The Grand Kill Downtown"
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That reminds me of all the idiots in the NIMBY & anti city crowd, including Zev Yarovslavsky, who back in the early 1990s opposed construction of a new highrise office bldg proposed for a site near Fig & 8th St, where the Metropolis condo towers now are supposed to be built.
He was even more of a super NIMBY cuz at that time there were a whole lot more gaps & deadzones in the hood. So for him to have had the POV he had meant he really was as bad as, if not worse than---as colemonkee puts it----an "ass clown". Therefore, Yaroslavsky (& speaking of "ass" clowns) had a stick up his butt over the issue of too much density, congestion & whatnot.
Then a few yrs later he was the one who pushed for a ban of tax monies going to subway construction. Now in 2008, it's easy & convenient for him to say that we need to extend the Red Line. Oh, yea, Zev (aka "ass clown") where were you several yrs ago when supporting more subway devlpt would've helped keep the momentum from the 1990s (when the red line was being built) going full speed ahead?
Quote:
LA WEEKLY
The rules for how Angelenos wanted to fashion their city were arduously, sometimes bitterly, negotiated among homeowners, developers, environmentalists and politicians in the mid-'80s, led by then city councilmen Joel Wachs, Marvin Braude and Yaroslavsky. Those core rules today hold tremendous power, creating a blueprint that dictates which Los Angeles neighborhoods should be preserved — and which should be dramatically built up.
On the City Council itself, the likes of Wachs and Braude are long gone, replaced by avidly pro-density council members such as Jan Perry, Council President Eric Garcetti and Wendy Gruel, who rarely say no to grand construction plans and work in tandem with obscure regional planning commissions that routinely override zoning rules in favor of developers and property owners.
Yaroslavsky, silent for the first two years of Villaraigosa's reign, now snaps, "These density hawks at City Hall are trying to undo 20 years of our work."
In the 1960s, a city growth cap of 4.2 million was established as the peak load for Los Angeles' infrastructure and services. This allowed for urban centers like Century City, Warner Center and downtown, while protecting single-family neighborhoods. Three years ago, Perica warned, "growth beyond 4.2 million people would require that existing single-family neighborhoods and lower-density residential areas would have to be 'up-zoned' in the future for more intense multistory density." He added pointedly, "Residents didn't want Los Angeles to look like other higher-density Eastern cities, like Chicago and New York."
Nonetheless, the agendas of builders, land speculators, the chambers of commerce, the Planning Department and elected leaders have produced a virtually nondebated tectonic shift since the residential real estate turnaround of 2002, much increased under Villaraigosa. The shift is pushing L.A. from its suburban model of single-family homes with gardens or pools — the reason many come here — toward an urban template of shrinking green patches and multistory buildings of mostly renters.
To be sure, not everyone sees this in the negative light that people such as The New Geography author and social critic Joel Kotkin ("We remain an increasingly suburban nation") and Yaroslavsky do. Downtown developer Tom Gilmore scoffs that Kotkin and other defenders of suburbia and single-family dwellings "take that notion of urbanism and say, 'Oh my god, they're going to do that to your neighborhood too! They're going to make everything a "heat island"!'"
To Gilmore, the attitude in Ventura County and cities such as Santa Barbara, Rohnert Park, Sonoma, Healdsburg, Tracy and Dublin, all of which have enacted residential-growth limits to stop urbanization, denies the inevitable. "Growth is not an option," says Gilmore. "We can grow with care, with thought and creativity, or we can grow the way we've grown for 150 years. I don't think the Planning Department has got it all right, but I'm happy they've got a template we can argue about."
Of 16,874 housing units built the year after Villaraigosa was elected, 86 percent were multifamily — the vast majority of those rentals. Established homeowner neighborhoods — the glue that historian and former California State Librarian Kevin Starr once noted helped hold L.A. together, even in bad times — are an afterthought; the Brookings Institute reports that L.A. is suffering a middle-class decline more pronounced than in any other urban area in America.
Today, (Yaroslavsky) says Los Angeles desperately needs a subway to the sea. But 23 years ago, his was the loudest voice against tunneling under the Westside after a 1985 explosion of naturally occurring methane gas ripped through the Ross Dress for Less near Fairfax. He and Westside Congressman Henry Waxman fought the use of federal funds for the line, and won. Some critics said Yaroslavsky really shut down the subway plan in anger over waste and corruption in the Metropolitan Transit Authority. In any case, even in 1996, when new technologies dramatically reduced the tunneling risks, Yaroslavsky blocked funding.
Longtime Westsiders remember it was Yaroslavsky who ushered through the huge expansion of the Westside Pavilion in 1986, despite community outrage over gridlock. Developer Gilmore is one of many pro-growthers who blame "Zev" for so disrupting the old mass-transit scheme that today the Westside is "incredibly dense" and has "the worst traffic in the city," but Yaroslavsky tires of getting blamed for inevitable development pressures in his former Council District 5.
Yaroslavsky counters today's dominant voice of pro-growthers in City Hall by saying that had he not halted the $300-million-per-mile subway, Los Angeles could never have afforded to create the popular Orange Line bus lanes in the Valley or the Gold Line light rail from downtown to Pasadena. Sounding like the old Yaroslavsky, he tells the Weekly, "In all corners of the city, a revolution is brewing against the pack mentality at City Hall."
^  oh, brother! what a great rationalization, Zev!
Beyond what's in store for Hollywood and the Valley, Yaroslavsky also believes that the SB 1818 Implementation Ordinance places treasured, low-slung neighborhoods such as the Fairfax District's historic rental corridor at risk. But since the mayor is ducking public discussion, Yaroslavsky, a powerful elected official, finds himself instead debating two little-known, if influential, city employees who serve at Villaraigosa's pleasure — Goldberg and Senior City Planner Jane Blumenfeld.
"This is where Gail Goldberg is missing the boat," Yaroslavsky explains of the threats to established, steady neighborhoods. For example, in the Fairfax District, where SB 1818's incentives allow developers to blow past existing zoning, "You've just increased the chance of demolition and redevelopment from impossible to probable."
To Blumenfeld, those neighborhoods are underutilized "transit corridors." She also denies Yaroslavsky's charge that Fairfax — as well as other stable villages that make up L.A. — is threatened by SB 1818. Developers still find that "land is expensive, lumber is expensive. The [state] law's been in effect for almost three years, but we've not seen any projects on Fairfax."
In the 32 months since Villaraigosa was elected, for example, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News have written only four stories about a plan to allow apartments without parking in order to squeeze in more units.
"There should be a debate!" Yaroslavsky wheezes, a victim of allergies, dabbing his nose with a handkerchief. "The proponents of the density hawks, including the director of the Planning Department, and the real estate industry, and the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce — they had the audacity to say that they negotiated the plan [with homeowners]. Not true, there wasn't one neighborhood group that knew about it!"
In fact, I had recently authored a piece on the city's "Parking Reduction Ordinance," which lets developers of apartments and condos near train stations and bus stops get a waiver from the city's minimum parking-space requirements. In a radical departure, the city could allow big apartments to be constructed without parking spaces.
The "public-transit promoting" Parking Reduction Ordinance is not going over well with some of the very few Los Angeles residents who have heard of it. The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council says that, among other things, the reduced-parking ordinance will eventually punish the working poor (who actually use public transit), helping to prod them out of neighborhoods where hipster, "transit-oriented" projects lacking parking would almost inevitably be paired with luxury rentals.
Developer Gilmore insists the parking-reduction waiver isn't aimed at "what's happening in Silver Lake today, but what it will look like in 20 to 30 years." Yaroslavsky responds, "I don't think Gail [Goldberg] has a clue as to the impact of what these 'incentives' will be."
"But let's say they're accurate," Yaroslavsky conjectures. "Are we being told that we need to rebuild the entire city to facilitate another 2.5 million people in the next 17 years? Good luck. It's not going to happen — economically or politically ... It's preposterous. The deal is that there are a number of developers who see an opportunity here to make a killing."
The actual growth statistics fly in the face of the luxury-apartment future envisioned by the Villaraigosa administration. The U.S. Census says that between 1990 and 2000, 400,000 more residents fled Los Angeles County than moved in from other states and California counties. And significantly, the people who moved here earn an average of $3,000 less per year than the 400,000 who fled.
Yet the population is expanding, and the two key causes are illegal immigration and the high birth rate among the poor and working poor. Local Latino birth rates are driving it, and in Los Angeles, that means families with a median annual income circling $25,000.
Who is going to snap up thousands of luxury apartments on the drawing boards, at $2,500 a month? A few foreign nationals from Stuttgart and London, Dubai and Moscow? Even if Villaraigosa's team comes up with 16,000 new units per year in order to please land speculators, developers and bureaucrats at SCAG, it's highly unlikely that L.A.'s new residents — not hipsters but low-income families — could afford them.
"There's never been the market to support what they've been building," says Joel Kotkin, who notes that L.A. planners mistakenly believe they are creating the next New York or Chicago, when, Kotkin believes, it's more likely they are erecting a dense new Third World city.
Since 2005, Villaraigosa has been tirelessly cheerleading for a taller city. He has often pointed to the frenzied construction of mixed-use buildings (apartments, shops and offices) as proof that he is probusiness.
In fact, some counter that L.A. is antibusiness, a city that drives big and small companies to neighboring Pasadena, Calabasas, Glendale, Culver City and elsewhere, earning itself special attention each year in the Kosmont Report on urban areas with backward business policies. Villaraigosa appears to believe that edifices equate with business, and that the buildings themselves will lure in an educated work force and quality companies. "If we're not creating wealth, if we're not bringing in investment, if the official bird of Los Angeles isn't the crane, then we won't be able to do all the good things we would like to do for our people," Villaraigosa told the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2006.
His narrow emphasis on high-density housing construction might cost L.A. if a recession has really arrived. "The burst housing bubble has hit us pretty hard," says Joseph Linton, policy associate for Livable Spaces, a nonprofit developer that's completed mixed-income, transit-oriented residences in Long Beach and Lincoln Heights. The affordable units are selling, "but our market-rate units are going very slowly." Adds Gary Toebben, president of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce, "New market-rate housing is just not moving."
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