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Airport Closure Will Trigger More Housing Development, Not a Great Park

By Nikki Kolhoff

On Tuesday, the Santa Monica City Council will instruct staff to move forward with a $2 million consultant to plan the “airport conversion,” which is development of the Santa Monica Airport once it closes, currently scheduled for January 1, 2029.

However, it is dangerous and irresponsible to move forward with airport closure and “conversion” planning without a clear legal basis that would allow for a Great Park without housing development. A speculative memo by the City Attorney is insufficient for this purpose ("City May Need to Explore Housing at Airport," January 27, 2025).

Many well-intentioned organizations are telling residents to support the staff report without reservation because they believe broad community support for a park will convince City Council to build it.

For unexplained reasons, they are not disclosing these huge State-driven development risks, including that 2014 Measure LC has been overridden by State law, that are clearly noted in the Staff Report and accompanying City Attorney memo. The only remaining local control is whether and when the airport closes.

In addition, many Great Park “supporters” have a long history of lobbying for the development currently engulfing our city. Meanwhile, others have been fighting for decades to close the airport and are disregarding the welfare of all the city’s residents in their narrow private pursuit of airport closure regardless of the cost.

Clearly, in this situation, it is foolish to trust a handful of unelected park “supporters” promising to cut a deal behind closed doors that will forever change Santa Monica.

Compounding the development risk, we have a City Council that was installed by pro-housing activists who have been working for a decade to close the airport for development.

It’s naïve to think they would abandon their prize now that it’s within reach. During the election, they openly favored eliminating single family neighborhoods, and in their first meeting in December they instructed Staff to draft an ordinance for residential development on non-residential land and did not exclude the airport land.

We are entitled to transparency, which includes an outside legal opinion regarding the fate of airport land before any further action is taken toward closing the airport.

City Council must instruct staff to immediately seek an outside legal opinion that definitively answers the following questions.

1. Is the airport “developable land” under state law (SB-7) that will be assigned Regional Housing Needs Assesment (RHNA) units the City must plan to build?

2. Did the 2017 City Council resolution count as a closure decision, or is another vote of the Council required to close the airport?

3. Does the staff report assertion that no further vote is needed mean that the airport land will be included in the next RHNA cycle that begins in 2029?

4. If Santa Monica were to build a park on some or all of the airport land, would it have to increase density in the rest of the city to accommodate the RHNA allocation?

Absent a clear answer to all of these questions that confirms local control, it is reckless and irresponsible for City Council to continue to move forward with an “airport conversion” process that is likely to cause irreparable harm to Santa Monica and its residents.

Nikki Kolhoff is a longtime resident of Sunset Park and vice president of the board of Friends of Sunset Park. The opinions expressed above are her own and do not reflect those of the neighborhood association.

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