By Daniel Larios
Staff Writer

November 17, 2014 – Santa Monica stakeholders will get the chance this week to provide feedback on the Zoning Ordinance update that translates the city’s development policies into tangible laws.

Those who cannot make it to Wednesday’s town hall meeting at the Lincoln Middle School Auditorium at 7 p.m. can catch it online courtesy of CityTV, who will record the meeting for later broadcast and video archived on the City’s website.

The public can continue to offer input throughout the Planning Commission and City Council’s review of the redline draft of the Update, which the commission has reviewed, often page by page at two dozen meetings since December.

During these meetings, which often went well into the night, the Commission spent hours debating the finer points of the Update, from issues such as medical marijuana dispensaries (2 allowed in the city) to parking to food trucks.

Not even the ordinance’s Table of Contents is safe from commission scrutiny. In the meantime, everything else is on hold.

“Since the planning commission has been focused on the Zoning Ordinance, it has prevented other projects from coming forward,” Planning Director David Martin told the Lookout in April.

Santa Monica has approximately 35 development agreements (DAs) in the pipeline, all of which must go through the Planning Commission before going to the Council for approval.

DAs -- which are negotiated on a project-by-project basis for large projects – have increased partly because the Interim Zoning Ordinance – which was adopted in 2011 as a place-holder until the update is complete -- is still in place, Martin said.
Once the new standards are set, City staff expects the number of DAs to decrease.

“We expect that once we have a Tier 2 process, more projects will opt to go to Tier 2 and that would reduce the number of DAs,” Martin said.

Tier 2 projects are not as large as Tier 3 and will undergo a more efficient planning process than the DA process for Tier 3 projects.

The new Zoning Ordinance will have no effect on the three Downtown hotel projects proposed along Ocean Avenue, which would include towers more than double the City’s current 84-foot height limit, since projects that large will still have to go through the DA process.

According to City staff, the Zoning Ordinance Update includes the following:

• No changes to basic requirements for residential zones, such as height or density limits, to “continue to minimize future changes in residential areas. Smaller-scale commercial areas, such as Main Street and Montana Avenue, will also continue to be conserved.”
  
  
• Neighborhood-serving retail and services within walking distance of existing neighborhoods, and a mix of housing types to help meet diverse needs, “implemented along mixed-use boulevards served by transit.”
  
  
• New and improved design guidelines for structures and renovations that “emphasize character, quality, and context,” and a design review that looks at building and site concepts earlier in the process.
  
  
• Community Benefits for medium and large-sized projects, including on-site affordable housing, fees for transportation improvements, fees for public open space and fees for childcare.

The Interim Zoning Ordinance was passed in 2011 as a way to enable the City to enforce new standards outlined in the 2010 Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) update. 

The LUCE will dictate development in Santa Monica for about the next quarter century, when the City will once again have to update its general plan.
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