Why Defend the Venice Specific Plan?
By Dennis
Hathaway
The Venice Coastal Zone
Specific Plan came into being as part of an attempt by the city to give local
communities greater voice in land-use and planning decisions that were
traditionally made in offices and corridors of city hall, where influence was
wielded not by members of the local community, but by the real estate
development lobby and other interests with a financial stake in those
decisions.
Before putting in place the zoning
and land-use regulations in the plan, the city planning department solicited
extensive opinion from community members about such matters as building height,
density, transportation, architecture and design. In other words, they asked the
question, “What do you want your community to be?” Not everyone
agreed, nor did the final product perfectly reflect everyone’s desires,
but it was a significant attempt to empower the community to make the kind of
decisions that had historically been made by politicians who usually deferred to
the interests who had their ears and funded their
campaigns.
Now, with real estate
development in Venice having picked up a full head of steam, it’s little
surprise that resistance to the concept of community empowerment embodied in the
specific plan is growing by leaps and bounds, although it’s never stated
as such. Rather, developers seeking major exceptions to specific plan limits on
such things as height and density claim that the community benefits inherent in
their projects—units of affordable housing, tourist amenities,
cutting-edge architecture, greenness, to name a few—warrant what is
essentially a tossing-out of the fruits of the grass-roots labor that preceded
adoption of the specific plan and replacement with the old system of
decision-making by city hall politicians and their appointees.
It’s easy to see why development
interests prefer this latter way. It’s not as easy to see why many members
of the Venice Neighborhood Council board and its Land Use and Planning Committee
have apparently bought into an idea that ultimately diminishes, rather than
enhances, their power. The word “power” is appropriate in spite of
the fact that the VNC board and LUPC have, on paper, very little. Their power is
through being the voice of the community, and by extension, supporting the
empowerment of the community to fight attempts to impose land-use and other
decisions from above. And the weapon to fight those attempts lies right at hand,
in the form of the Venice Coastal Zone Specific Plan, which really is the voice
of the community when it says, “you may build this high, you may build to
this density.” And so forth.
The
power to decide on a project with a major impact in Venice is in the hands of 15
persons in city hall, only one of which is beholden in any significant way to
members of the community. That’s 15 persons who mingle daily with
lobbyists who don’t represent defenders of community empowerment and the
details of specific plans, but interests who would be happy if those defenders
were silenced, or simply went away.
To be
fair, the planning commission and city council could approve projects in Venice
that blow holes in the specific plan even if the VNC board and LUPC unanimously
oppose them.
However, by not defending
the specific plan, and sending a message to developers that they should design
their projects within the restrictions of that plan, our local representatives
and ostensible voice of our community are encouraging those developers to do the
opposite, and to imagine that their desire to build things that will provide the
maximum return to themselves and their investors is the greater good,
transcendent of any ideas the people on the ground in Venice—homeowners,
renters, small business owners, workers, professionals—may have believed
they were embodying in law when they participated in the process of shaping the
Venice Coastal Zone Specific Plan.
Some have said that this plan should
not be regarded as carved in stone. I
agree.
But how should it be changed?
Through the piecemeal granting of exceptions, or through the same kind of
process of community input that preceded its initial adoption? If you believe in
community empowerment in regard to land-use decisions, the answer is obvious.
Open a community debate, let those who believe added height and density is
warranted under certain circumstances make their case, and if it’s a
strong enough case then it will attract community support. Let those who believe
that the plan should be modified to attract the development of more affordable
housing make that case. And what better function for the VNC than to be a
facilitator of such a debate, instead of taking actions that make the system
less democratic, less responsive to the community it was established to
represent.
Posted: Mon - October 1, 2007 at 08:09 PM