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Santa Monica Daily Press SALUTING GENERAL SHERMAN SEE PAGE 4
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THE BEER AND PIZZA ISSUE
West L.A. medical complex causing concerns in SM BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
creating competition among drivers. While the public parking structures on Second and Fourth streets often remain close to full occupancy, the private garages are sitting empty. The consultants recommended that rather than focusing on building more spaces, city officials should increase pricing and adjust parking management policies, both of which are currently being reviewed. While drivers continue to fight for spaces on Second and Fourth streets, the
BUNDY DRIVE An ambitious proposal to build a new medical center and mixed-use condominium complex at one of the busiest intersections in West Los Angeles is drawing concerns from Santa Monica city officials and residents about the potential traffic impacts locally. The project, slated for construction at the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Bundy Drive in the heart of West L.A., is estimated to bring in more than 20,000 additional vehicle trips every day, including 830 extra during the morning rush and nearly 1,900 in the evening. The result is potential impacts to 15 out of 25 intersections within or bordering the Santa Monica-Los Angeles city limits, including Olympic Boulevard at Centinela Avenue, Centinela and the I-10 Freeway westbound on and off ramps, and Colorado Avenue at Stewart Street, Santa Monica city officials said. “It’s a very large project in an area of Los Angeles where we already have notoriously bad evening traffic and it’s adding more parking spaces than we have in all six of the (public) Downtown structures,” Ellen Gelbard, the assistant director of planning and community development, said. “It’s huge.” City Hall submitted a comment during the project’s draft environmental impact review process, expressing concerns about the amount of intersections that will be affected in Santa Monica and disagreeing with the mitigations that were proposed in the report. “They need to find other ways for people to get there than creating trips,” Gelbard said. The EIR suggested traffic signal coordination between the two cities. Stonebridge Holdings, which is the project applicant, would also provide a contribution of $2 million to provide for additional transportation-related improvements in the project area, a portion of which would go toward paying for traffic signal synchronization. The project is currently under advisement and will go to the Los Angeles Planning Commission in January, eventually going to the City Council for approval because of the zone change proposal to allow
SEE LAND PAGE 10
SEE TRAFFIC PAGE 10
IT’S A WRAP
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com Chris McNair of Arete Digital Imaging works on a portion of the Cirque du Soleil-themed vinyl wrap on a Big Blue Bus at the service yard on Colorado Boulevard Monday afternoon. The festively wrapped 40-foot-long, clean fuel bus has become a traditional start of the holiday season in Santa Monica and other parts of Los Angeles. The holiday bus will take a different route each day around the BBB service area to ensure as many people as possible get a chance to see it — or ride on it — during the holidays.The bus will remain in service throughout the season until Jan. 4.
What the future may bring Elected officials consider different uses for land bought for parking BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
DOWNTOWN There’s a cluster of properties on a quiet tree-lined street that were long ago fated to cure the parking ills of the busiest commercial district in the city. Some sitting vacant, others still housing tenants, the buildings along the 1300 block of Fifth Street were purchased by City Hall under a more than three-year-old Downtown Parking Program, which seeks to increase the number of parking spaces by more than 1,700 through new and upgrad-
ed structures. But a consultant study that suggested City Hall only needs to better manage its existing inventory of spaces rather than create new structures could change the destiny of those buildings. Last summer, Walker Parking Consultants released a report that found a significant amount of excess parking in private garages and public structures near the perimeter of Downtown due in large part to an inefficient pricing policy, charging less for spaces most conveniently located to the Third Street Promenade and therefore
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