By Lookout Staff

Friday, April 9 -- If the energy collected in one conference room at Santa Monica's Doubletree Hotel had the power to stop a major development, Playa Vista would be history.

On Thursday night, a large conference room was packed with several hundred supporters and the passion was unmistakable. But few believe that will be enough to halt the $8 billion, Z-acre development geared to house Dreamworks Studios and thousands of homes on a swath of land that stretches from near the ocean to the 405 Freeway just South of Marina del Rey.

Still, the coalition of environmental activists who coordinated the town hall meeting on Playa Vista are hoping the energy built from the gathering will reverberate throughout the Westside and defeat the project before developers have a chance to raze any more land.

"We can stop it -- this is not a done deal," said Wendy Wendlandt of the California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG). "On the other hand, we have a lot of work to do to make it not a done deal."

The meeting was both a rally and a crash course on Playa Vista -- the legal challenges and the environmental disputes -- told to an audience that largely seemed sympathetic to the cause.

An attorney outlined the legal challenges the project has faced -- and still faces. A scientist presented a rundown on the environmental reasons why the Ballona Wetlands should be preserved -- the endangered species that have been sighted there, for example, and the need to protect as much uplands and wetlands as possible to sustain the ecosystem.

With one Santa Monica City Councilman - Michael Feinstein -- on stage, a candidate for city council - Richard Bloom -- sitting nearby him and another councilman - Kevin McKeown -- in the audience -- at least part of the focus turned to what the city has done and will do to stop the project.

So far, it turns out, Santa Monica has done nothing. Not yet. Several years ago, the city accepted more than $1 million for traffic mitigation from Maguire Thomas, then the developer of the project; in exchange, Santa Monica agreed to not oppose the first phase of the project.

However, Feinstein told the audience that the council would discuss an item at the May 11 meeting seeking to oppose Playa Vista's phases two and three. And he promised to lobby Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, for federal money to acquire the property.

Both Feinsten and Bloom, who is running as a Santa Monicans for Renters Rights candidate for the open seat on the city council, used Thursday's town hall meeting as a chance to slam Playa Vista -- and, in the case of Bloom, to do a little campaigning along the way.

"If we can maintain our energy level, we'll prevail," said Bloom, past president of the Friends of Sunset Park, a neighborhood group that fought Playa Vista. The group - which ended up as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the project - charged that the massive development would draw too much traffic to the area.

"What's wrong with caring about your own back yard," he said. "Our back yard is the whole damn world. You can be a NIMBY. Don't let them tell you otherwise."

Marcia Hanscom, president of the Wetlands Action Network, challenged the Santa Monica City Council to arrange a meeting with Dreamworks executives, who have plans to develop a studio on the property, and legitimize the environmentalists' efforts. Feinstein, who made it clear at the beginning of the meeting that he was not speaking on behalf of the city, did not respond directly to Hanscom's challenge.

But he bashed the project's developers for pushing forward with their plans and he lambasted the Los Angeles City Council for letting it happen -- accusing the council of not having the guts to stop the project.

"There's nothing smart about taking your most valuable resource… to take open space…and throw it out," said Feinstein. "Smart growth is holding onto what we have now."

Feinstein didn't mince words about anything related to Playa Vista.

He called the incentives and subsidies that the Los Angeles City Council granted developers "corporate welfare." He predicted that traffic snarls caused by Playa Vista on Lincoln Boulevard would be "apocolyptic." He referred to some in Santa Monica as "pseudo-liberals." And he referred to Santa Monica's efforts to maintain affordable housing a "Darwinian struggle" and warned that Playa Vista would end up "gentrifying the housing stock."

And what about the jobs that Playa Vista promised to bring to the Westside?

Feinstein charged that the Los Angeles City Council and the city's redevelopment agency had "raped" money from the redevelop-ment fund to build skyscrapers downtown.

The city ought to re-direct money, re-build downtown and "balance the karma for what was stolen before," Feinstein said.

for more info:www.wetlandact.org/townhall
-------------www.ballona.org
--------- -- www.ballonawetlands.org