Marina Madhouse
By John
Davis
As a result of a lawsuit the
California Coastal Commission is reviewing the Local Coastal Plan for Marina del
Rey. This plan, the (LCP) is adopted by local governments like the County of Los
Angeles to issue local Coastal Development Permits. The LCP, by law, must be
reviewed every 5 years by the Coastal Commission to ensure the local entity is
complying with the stringent protections of the Coastal Act.
The Director of the California Coastal
Commission, Peter Douglas once sent me an email stating that the Commission
would not review the MDR LCP. The Coastal Commissions outright refusal led to a
lawsuit. Now the review is winding up and public comments are still being taken
by the Coastal Commission. It is important that the City of Los Angeles submits
meaningful comments since what the County has proposed for MDR will be the ruin
of Venice.
Primarily the County sees
the public small craft harbor as a way to generated revenue for the County. But
both the federal and state approvals required the harbor only generate enough
revenues to support the harbor, not the entire mismanaged County
budget.
So the County leased the public
land to private developers with names like Doug Ring and Cindy Misckowski.
Housing now exists in areas that were supposed to contain small cabanas that
would be used by various families on a rotational basis to provide for active
public participation.
Now the County
is going hog-wild, leasing the parking lots out, approving more residence hotels
and long-term condo leases in huge mega-structures. The County is currently
proposing to build even more residential development at Mothers Beach, proposes
to turn Admiralty into a series of shopping malls and movie theaters, and to
completely tear down Fishermen’s Village and drop big boxes there,
adjacent to the Ballona Wetlands. Recently citizens fought off a proposal to
build a mall over the launch ramp parking lot, which would have forced boaters
to use an underground parking structure to launch. County Officials have said
the public park needs to compete with Playa
Vista.
The County proposes to run the
90 freeway right into the marina and reconfigure Admiralty and Via Marina into
high capacity highways to accommodate the fiscal wishes of private developers in
Marina del Rey.
So how would this
affect traffic on Lincoln, Washington, Pacific, Main, Ocean and other Venice
Streets? Think about all of the other major developments taking place in that
area on Maxella and the huge ugly green condo towers at the South end of
Venice.
Put it together and a
reasonable person can foresee gridlock and increased air and water pollution.
The only way the County can pull this off is if nobody notices and the City
keeps quiet.
So now is the time to
object to the County nightmare scenario, write to the California Coastal
Commission, SOON, and tell them the marina is a public small craft harbor and
that should be used only for recreation and not for residential development that
will negatively affect surrounding communities like
Venice.
Encourage your local City
Councilman, Bill Rosendahl, to comment for Venice and other surrounding
communities. Encourage the Venice Neighborhood Council to do something about
protecting Venice instead of twiddling their thumbs over lesser
matters.
But most importantly write to
the Coastal Commission, get involved and attend the upcoming hearings.
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Posted: Wed - March 1, 2006 at 01:24 PM