CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-The “Purple Line Transit Neighborhood Plan” is nothing more than a deceptively misnamed specific plan, so please allow me a deep planning dive into this latest City Hall sting operation.
I have worked on many such specific plans as a city planner, and they are not plans; they are only City Council-adopted zoning ordinances. They are, though, developed with extensive public participation and local analysis before they reach the draft stage, which is generally a complex ordinance of at least 20 pages.
The role of environmental review: That is the point in time when draft specific plans are subject to environmental review through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The idea that a concept, which is all that City Planning has so far proposed at two poorly noticed workshops, would leap ahead two or three years to the environmental review stage is preposterous. That is why I call it fast-tracking. In fact, the certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), is supposed to take place in 2019, or about a year from now. That means the final ordinance will then be presented to the City Council, undoubtedly met with lawsuits because of its slip-shod preparation.
How can anyone now propose environmental alternatives to a project that is only in the concept stage? How could anyone identify which potential environmental impact aspects should be analyzed in the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), when an actual project does not yet exist?
More specifically, we do not know what the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) scoping announcement spelled out about the future project: that it would amend the Wilshire Community Plan’s maps, land use designations, goals, policies, population forecasts, monitoring program, and implementation ordinances. We do not know what zoning overlay ordinance(s) will become part of the project. We do not know anything about the project’s future urban design ordinance? Will a Design Review Board, City Planning staff, or Building and Safety review design provisions? We do not yet know any details about the re:code LA zones that will be imposed on this area, especially their new parking requirements.
We do not even know the relationship, if any, between City Planning’s two up-zoning proposals and the Purple Line, specifically the forecast transit behavior of the residents, employees, shoppers, clients, and visitors in the new buildings that the plan will promote. Will these people become subway riders? If not, will the up-zoning ordinance be revoked because its entire rationale (i.e., new buildings are needed to fill empty subway cars) turned out to be specious?
This “plan” is still in its infancy, and it should be done right to be effective. It should be part of the Wilshire Community Plan’s update process, which will comprehensively examine the plan area’s transportation, housing, infrastructure and services, and climate conditions before appending capital improvements and zone change ordinances.
Existing and future transit services should obviously be part of this update, and any warranted zone changes should be done in the correct sequence. They should implement the updated Wilshire Community Plan, not precede it. To jumpstart the implementation of a Community Plan that does not yet exist, through up-zoning, without any community outreach and without analysis of the plan or study area, wreaks of a scam on the fast track. To call is sloppy planning would be too kind.
Doing it correctly: Plans and zone change ordinances are developed through a well-known interactive process of community outreach and analysis. Environmental reviews are conducted for the benefit of decision makers, who then certify the EIR. To assist the decision makers, the DEIR compares the project to existing plans and zones, and to environmentally superior alternatives. For example, in this case a Transit Oriented Community plan based on reduced fares, kiss 'n ride, park 'n ride, bicycle infrastructure, and upgraded sidewalks could be an environmentally superior alternative. It could achieve the same results of increased transit ridership without any land use changes.
This is called doing it right, the opposite of a fast-tracked scam.
(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on local planning controversies for CityWatchLA. Please send comments and corrections to [email protected]. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
