A land use battle reaches its endgame

Voters in Redondo Beach will be given two options on Nov. 4 for bringing future development to the ballot box.
Depending on whose arguments you believe, the consequences of this electoral choice could result in alternatively bleak scenarios. According to its opponents, Measure DD will severely damage the local economy, reduce public safety, hurt schools and spawn dozens of lawsuits. Measure EE’s opponents say it will allow condo developers to run roughshod, worsen traffic congestion, strain the city’s infrastructure and drain city services.

Measure DD, an initiative petition proposed by the slow growth residents’ group Building a Better Redondo, is the more sweeping of the two. It is a 10-page amendment to the City Charter that would trigger a public vote on major changes to allowable land use within the city, including any zoning change that converts public use to private use, non-residential use to residential use of at least 8.8 units per acre, or any change that allows a commercial development of 40,000 sq. ft., a residential development of 25 units, or increases traffic by 150 rush hour vehicle trips at any of 20 major intersections within the city.

Measure EE, proposed by the Redondo Beach City Council subsequent to Building a Better Redondo’s successful petitioning campaign, would require a public vote on a more limited set of zoning changes. It is a four-page amendment to the City Charter that likewise triggers a vote on major changes to land use, but it defines such changes as any up-zoning in single family residential zones to multifamily residential, commercial, or industrial use, increases in building height limits in the city’s coastal area, and rezoning of park or open space area to any other use. 
Jim Light, the chair of Building a Better Redondo, argues that Measure EE is nothing more than a ruse devised by the City Council to take votes from Measure DD. He said EE would almost never trigger a vote because the way it defines land uses changes rarely occur. Nearly every recent condo development, he notes, would have been untouched by EE.

You are either for allowing people to vote on some developments or you are against it, and you either have concerns about the future of development in the city or you don’t, Light said. If you have concerns, then giving residents a vote puts a check and balance in the system.
Measure DD is squarely opposed by the city’s political establishment. Nearly every elected official ‘ including all the City Council and every member of the school board ‘ has opposed the measure, as have many other major political forces within the city, including the police, fire, and teachers’ unions and the Chamber of Commerce.

The DD initiative did receive the signatures of 6,390 residents, however, who signed petitions to put it on the ballot.

Councilman Steve Diels argues that many of those signatures were obtained by a paid canvasser who was not a Redondo resident. Diels, who helped launch Measure EE, said that the council-supported measure better protects single family residents. He said that DD makes an exception for low-income housing and would thereby have the unintended consequence of increasing housing density in the city.

EE is of, by, and for Redondo Beach, period, Diels said. To think we should have some major protections ‘ that would seem to be DD, but it’s not. The phrase I finally came up with [for Building a Better Redondo] is they are against everything they are for ‘ what they really propose is high density condo development in Redondo BeachMeasure DD would freeze zoning, drive away investment, and set the city up for lawsuits ‘ I mean, that is the trifecta for disaster ‘ and then leave the door open for high density, low-income housing.

Light called Diel’s argument laughable and said it was indicative of the disingenuousness of the entire EE campaign. He said 120 residents gathered signatures ‘ with only one hired canvasser late in the petitioning effort, who gathered 1,000 signatures ‘ and that the affordable housing exception is a state law.

It is on the books already in current zoning processes, Light said. You have to suspend all understanding of basic fiscal viability to make the statement that these exclusions would drive an explosion of affordable housing.  It does not pen out fiscally.Diels’ characterization of DD is just more desperate rhetoric from a pro-development egotist afraid he is losing his precious power. DD puts a real check and balance on the City’s development processes.  Otherwise they would not oppose it.

The backdrop
The dueling measures are the culmination of a land-use battle that began eight years ago, when city officials proposed a new downtown village waterfront commercial district that included a zoning change allowing 2,998 residential units where the AES power plant currently exists.
The plan was called the Heart of the City. The actual project, city officials contended, would have resulted in 1,200 new units; the residential units provided AES with an economic motive to downsize the power plant as well as customers for the new business district across the street. Residents wanted none of it. A referendum campaign gathered more than 6,000 signatures in weeks, and the council rescinded the plan.

Light first became involved in city politics in the referendum effort. He said that what first caught his attention was the city’s HOC Environmental Impact Report.
It showed 6,600 new residents in 2,998 condos would only generate 814 traffic trips at rush hour, said Light, an aerospace engineer who spent 13 years in the Air Force, where he became familiar with environmental reports. That just doesn’t meet the basic litmus test for being true.
The activist movement that sprung from the Heart of the City went in different directions. The leader of the referendum movement, Chris Cagle, was elected to the City Council in 2003. His focus was on achieving consensus. When the council approved a redevelopment plan for part of the Heart of the City area along Catalina Avenue later that year, another referendum movement sprung up and the plan was once again shelved. Shortly thereafter, a visioning process intended to rally the community around a consensus-derived plan for the harbor splintered into two visions that eventually found their way to the ballot in a competing advisory vote. One was a scaled-back development plan on the AES site that featured a hotel, park, and residences, and the other was a full-blown park.

Both Light and Bill Brand, the leader of the park movement, ran for City Council as part of a slow growth ticket in the same March 2005 election that featured the advisory vote. The results were somewhat confusing: while the park vision defeated the modified development plan, the slow growth slate lost.

The movement was not finished. In January of 2006, the City Council overturned a planning commission decision and approved a 12-unit condo project on Catalina Ave. as well as new zoning that would allow 82 units on four acres along the street. Later that same year, city planning staff recommended a rezoning of Torrance Blvd., arguing that the economically underperforming area could best be revivified through mixed-used development. The proposal would have allowed for 189 additional residential units.

It was the final straw for Light. He produced a 92-page report assailing the planning staff’s findings and took particular aim and what he claimed was a failure ‘ once again ‘ to accurately assess traffic impacts. The council put the Torrance Boulevard plans on hold indefinitely, but by November of that year Light had launched Building a Better Redondo and its initiative effort.

Slow growth
Light, in an interview last week, accused the city of attempting to piecemeal Heart of the City type condo development throughout the city. He pointed to a Southern California Association of Government (SCAG) report that indicated that from 1998 through 2005, Redondo Beach had grown by 1,836 residential units (City staff said that Light had misunderstood the figure, and that it didn’t account for net growth by including demolitions during the same period. According to the California Department of Finance, Redondo added 784 units from 1998 through 2008).
Light acknowledged that the current City Council has taken some positive steps ‘ such as tabling the Torrance Blvd. rezoning and reducing a harbor rezoning earlier this year from its proposed 750,000 sq. ft. of commercial development to 400,000 sq. ft.

What we want to ensure is that even if this council was great ‘ and there is some credit due there ‘ you don’t know what the next council will do, Light said. It puts checks and balances in the city’s planning processes, and it levels the playing field between the city, developers, and residents.

Councilman Steve Aspel, who defeated Light in the District 1 council race three years ago, said that Measure DD essentially is an attempt to subvert those election results.
I don’t see it as a rezoning issue, Aspel said. I see it more as an in-your-face power grab. They ‘ being the people in Building a Better Redondo ‘ didn’t attain their goals in the last election, so they want to do it this way. I have talked to Jim Light and we have buried the hatchet. We just see the world through different lenses.

Cagle said that his experience serving on the council has given him a different perspective.
I understand from the perspective that they have tried to advance their particular point of view and it hasn’t worked completely for them, Cagle said. I would argue that in any political environment nobody wins 100 percent of the time. And that was actually a lesson for me ‘ that in any political environment there is give and take, there is a lot of patience required, and at the end of the day you have to acknowledge you are working with people, not robots. Everybody doesn’t fall in line with exactly the way you think it should be.

Diels said that Light is opposed to increased traffic and higher residential density yet commutes daily to Culver City and lives on a two-on-a-lot.

He wants to close the door behind him, Diels said. It’s more than NIMBY. It’s another thing: I got mine, you can’t have yours. That is different than ‘Not In My Back Yard.’ We are not trying to close the door on Redondo; what we are trying to do is provide amenities and keep the character of Redondo. What they are reacting to are zoning mistakes in the past. Jim Light might live on a two-on-lot and commute, but as far as zoning for condos, he is 30 years too late. That horse has left the barn. The question is what we can do now to protect the character of Redondo.

Light said that this argument was disingenuous because DD does nothing to prevent two-on-a-lots in areas where such development is currently permitted. He said the city’s bias towards large-scale residential development has outstripped its ability to provide infrastructure and services for new residential units.

I am not shutting the door behind me and not taking away anybody’s property rights, but if we don’t upgrade infrastructure in concert with the up-zoning of the city, you get a meltdown in infrastructure and that is an irresponsible way of growing our city, he said.
The larger difference between BBR and those who oppose DD, Light said, comes down to a matter of how one perceives the overall issue of development in Redondo Beach.

The bigger argument we are attacking is that development is under control, Light said. If you take a look at the big picture, in the Heart of the City we stopped the building of 3,000 units. On Torrance Boulevard, the initial environmental study was for over 500 condos. Then when residents pushed back they dropped it to half the area and 189So if you look at what the city has tried to pass, if residents hadn’t opposed it, the growth numbers would be much greater.

A city staff report last year showed the city’s growth slowing drastically. In the 1980s, the city added an average of 235 units per year, according to the report; in the 1990s, the figure was 132 units per year, and since 2000, 87 units per year. But Light pointed to the report as a means of masking the real impact of such growth, noting that the city’s net gain of 59 units in 2006 included such large developments as a 191 unit senior housing project on Ruxton Lane.

It’s pretty dishonest to take one number from one year and say development is under control, Light said. They pick one year when the numbers are low and say that is proof positive that development is slowed down.

The campaign
Measure DD faces a two-front battle in this election ‘ both from Measure EE and from an opposition PAC called Save Redondo. Measure EE is on the ballot just below Measure DD, but there has been no active campaign on its behalf. Light said that EE is intended to siphon votes from DD.
It has no campaign, no PAC, no fliers, no lawn signs, he said. Instead the Council played both sides of the fence, jumping in bed with ‘Save Redondo’ which is against any resident voting.
According to Diels ‘ who proposed the measure along with Aspel and Mayor Mike Gin ‘ state law prohibits the city from forming a campaign.
He knows better than that, because the city is not allowed to take an advocacy position, Diels said. It’s illegal. So that’s a red herring. We listened to what the public asked for and we put in the form of EE. And EE protects open space, protects the coastline, and protects single family residences from higher density zoning.
Save Redondo has campaigned quite vigorously. The group has raised $112,000 ‘ largely from business interests, including more than $50,000 from the California Association of Realtors, a fact that has drawn fire from BBR ‘ in order to convey an urgent message: that DD will discourage investment, lower property values, damage schools, decrease city revenues and make it harder to fund city services such as public safety.
Former Councilman John Parsons, a real estate agent who is also the chair of the Chamber of Commerce and who heads Save Redondo, said it’s natural that Realtors would want to defeat DD.
What profession is there that is more active in a community, that is more involved with our schools and that really knows what is going on more than Realtors? Parsons said. I mean, all our efforts are about quality of life and high property values. We don’t want to hurt those things. We’ve come out against this not because we want to line our own pockets but because we live here. We want those kinds of things for ourselves and our families.
Parsons argued that Measure DD represents a drastic change in the city’s form of government, from a representative democracy to a direct democracy. Don’t change our form of government, he said. If we don’t like what [elected officials] are doing, we’ll vote your butt out of office.
Light, whose group has raised about $12,000, all from residents, said that Save Redondo is a big business, pro-development group that is engaging in scare tactics. He said there is no evidence that DD will do anything Save Redondo says it will do, and points to 30 other cities in California that have passed some form of voter approval over land-use.
Not a single city has voted it out, Light said. You would think if it’s that bad for a city, the city council would say, ‘Look, we are going bankrupt, please allow us to vote on this and take it out.’ And it would be gone.
Lisa Kranitz, a municipal land-use attorney who is part of Save Redondo, disputed Light’s claim that 30 other cities have anything truly similar to DD. She said the few cities that have passed comparable initiatives include Newport Beach and Escondido, both who have found that what few proposals ever make it to a public vote are almost always turned down, thereby freezing investment. In Escondido, eight out of eight proposed projects went down, she said.
Parsons said that one doesn’t have to look outside the city to see what impact Measure DD would have on investment. Developer Alan Mackenzie, who owned the Redondo Beach Marina leasehold, sold the lease earlier this year at a slight loss for $9.8 million after his investors lost patience with the continuing uncertainty in the harbor area. He had attempted to reach a compromise with BBR but was unsuccessful.
Mackenzie said in an interview this week that the BBR initiative was definitely a substantial factor in his decision to sell. Mackenzie’s company, Mar Ventures, has built successful commercial developments in the area ‘ such as Plaza El Segundo ‘ and had hoped to build a boutique hotel and new retail stores in the marina.
You have political issues, financial issues, market issues, and if you lay on top of that the fact you have to get a vote of the people in a general election or a special election and those people, most of them are not going to have good information, won’t take the time to understand a complicated land-use issue, because it’s not like voting for a bond ‘ we wouldn’t want to go there, Mackenzie said. You have huge uncertainty there on top of all the other uncertainties.
Don Vangeloff, another activist with BBR, suggested that Mackenzie’s motivations for leaving were also related to the council’s cool reception to his proposal.
When Alan had preliminary plans before the council, Chris Cagle and Steve Aspel said, in effect, ‘I thought this plan was going to be for a 100 room hotel but it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,’ Vangeloff said. It just didn’t pencil out.
It just got too big, Light said. So it wasn’t just the initiative that chased Alan away.
Mackenzie said the process of getting approval for a project from most cities already incurs a cost of $500,000 to $1 million. Then you’ve spent all that money and you have to go to a vote, he said. It is just very hard for me to see people wanting to do that unless it is a very clear, easy to understand project.
Two other local investors echoed Mackenzie’s sentiments.
Mike Zislis, who is in the process of negotiating a new boutique Shade Hotel on a city-owned parcel on Harbor Drive, said he would probably withdraw the proposal if it required a public vote.
I don’t know why the slow growth people would want to act this way in this economy, he said. If they passed this slow growth thing, who would want to come into a hostile environment? What company would? The whole idea is you want to be embraced by the local community. I would not want to do anything where I’m not wanted We would have to rethink this whole thing.
Jonathan Tolkin, the developer who put together the Metlox project in Manhattan Beach, said he would not have gone forward with the project if Manhattan had required a public vote. It would scare people away, he said. That is like a beauty contest. It’s expensive and time-consuming. Why would you go through that? I would steer clear because it’s too much risk.
Vangeloff questioned exactly what kind of developer a public vote would scare away. He noted, for example, that Decron purchased Mackenzie’s leasehold and is currently developing a proposal.
If a developer feels they can’t convince the public, maybe it’s not good for the community that is already densely packed, he said. Decron came in and did make the investment. They made that investment after DD already qualified for the ballot, so they either felt what they were doing in the long run could get voter approval or they could do it with existing zoning.
Another hot button issue relating to Measure DD is the Redondo Beach Unified School District’s surplus properties ‘ 200 N. PCH and 325 Knob Hill. Measure DD supporters say that EE fails to protect large-scale development on the properties, which would require a zoning change for any kind of residential development. But school board president Todd Loewenstein said that the prospect of a condo development has not even been broached.
These are things that have been thrown out there by supporters of the initiative, this idea of condos, he said. Nobody I know has expressed any interest in doing mass residential development on school properties.
School board trustee Jane Diehl said the larger issue is that if the initiative hurts city revenues, it will hurt school revenues because of all the services the city provides RBUSD, such as school resource officers and crossing guards. She also said that a freeze in development could impact school enrollment.
There is the issue of having homes for young families, Diehl said. If we don’t have that in Redondo, it will hurt us, because there will be less kids for our schoolsSo I am looking at it more from the big picture standpoint than these two district lots that are unresolved.
Greg Allen, a firefighter-paramedic who is president of the Redondo Beach Firefighters’ Association, said that firefighters are actively campaigning against Measure DD because they feel that it threatens city revenues.
Anything that creates slow growth or no growth in an already encumbered economy is essentially going to cut down on what comes into the city, he said. Sixty percent of the city’s general fund is police and fire, so when funding is threatenedwhat will inevitably happen is they will have to start cutting police and fire to some degree and we will have to provide less service.
Light said that cuts to city revenue are purely speculative and are furthered by DD opponents as a political tactic.
They are just saying these things without any justification or substantiation, he said. Our safety will go down ‘ what are they basing that on? Well, the conjecture that revenue will go down. Well, what are you basing that on? Do you have a study or a case in another city where that has happened? No. It’s just pure fear-mongering. ER