|
 |
|
|
Lincoln Blvd. Traffic War
August 1990LINCOLN BLVD.:
Battleground of the Giants Can We Take It All? Can you imagine 540,000 more cars a day in the Westchester to Venice area? That’s what we face if 5 huge developments are built along Lincoln Blvd. as the owners are threatening to do. Two projects, Playa Vista and the LAX expansion will contribute 310,000 cars alone. According to traffic studies performed by both L.A. and Culver Cities, rush-hour traffic will triple on Lincoln Blvd from what it is now—which is already abominable. Fresh from ok’ing the Marina Place Mall in March of this year, the Culver City Council has just announced their opposition to L.A.’s Playa Vista, with Mayor Steven Gourley calling it “potentially disastrous”. Culver officials are also threatening a lawsuit over the L.A. City Council’s July 10th ok of the Channel Gateway project, partially in retaliation for a suit filed by the Venice Town Council and L.A. City against Culver City for their approving Marina Place. Now that both projects are approved, how do the 2 cities plan to deal with the traffic? Well, local businesses lose again to let the giants build. On-street parking on Lincoln Blvd. will soon disappear, replaced by traffic lanes, while small businesses that want to expand will have to give the city the front 16 feet of their property for a fourth lane on the Lincoln Freeway-er Blvd. Also threatened are businesses on Centinela Avenue and Sepulveda Blvd. The average driver will have to put up with even narrower lanes, a dangerous proposition, as trucks and buses haven’t gotten any narrower. To prove how far out of scale these projects are, the LAX/Marina/ Culver City area has 17 million square feet now of office space, and 20% of it was vacant in 1987. --(according to the 9/27/87-LA Times). As of last week’s Outlook, 33% of the LAX/Century Blvd office market is vacant. The total proposed for the Westside now is: 3.1 Million Square feet—Howard Hughes Center-- offices and hotels 4.5 million square feet—LAX Northside-office/hotel/retail/warehouse 3.1 Million square feet—Continental City-offices 1 million Square feet—Marina Place-shopping mall 2.1 m SF—Channel Gateway , 1000 apartments/condos- 300,000 SF of office
-------------------------Then look at Playa Vista: 4.9 Million square feet of office 700,000 square feet of retail 2400 hotel rooms, (which equals 2 million Square feet) plus 11,750 apartments/condos. Playa Vista and the others will double the westside’s supply of offices and retail. Who’s going to fill it all? A side by side comparison to Marina del Rey should be made. MDR has 6000 apartments, 972 hotel rooms and 25 restaurants, and two office towers—about 600,000 square feet, with about half its 800 acres a marina with 6000 boat slips. Playa Vista will be twice the development as Marina del Rey on slightly more land area. And as if pretending there’s no problem at all, L.A. County planners are trying to find a way to sneak the Marina Bypass through or get away with putting up buildings and not doing it at all. The County plans a Capacity Study of the streets in Marina del Rey to prove their contention that the marina doesn’t create as much traffic as they had thought. This would allow the County to Ok new hotels, restaurants and apartments without them having to build traffic “improvements” such as the Marina Bypass, the long-threatened extension of the Marina freeway over Lincoln Blvd. to the Marina and eventually Venice. The Venice Town Council originally filed suit against Culver City and the Marina Place developers in September 1988, immediately after Culver officials had OK’d the mall. L.A. City soon added its support to the suit, which argued that the mall’s traffic would illegally prevent people from getting to the beach. An early settlement of $12 million was offered for traffic “improvements” and an affordable housing fund in April of ‘89. This was, however, rejected by the Town Council’s membership. Judge Kurt Lewin ruled the next month partially in favor of the Town Council, forcing Culver City to redo technical documents, and putting off the Coastal access portion of the argument until after Culver officals re-OKed the project, which they did in March 1990. By then, L.A.’s Channel Gateway was nearing City approval. Strategically, the Town Council’s rejection forced the two projects to fight head-to-head. If the Town Council had settled with the Marina Place developers, it’s likely that Culver City would not be threatening a lawsuit against L.A.’s Channel Gateway, meaning, that both projects would probably be under construction now. So far, luckily for commuters, pedestrians, and other breathing individuals, both of these traffic monsters are in limbo.
|
