Planning Downtown’s Future

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

October 11 -- Jay P. Johnson has been Chair of the City's Planning Commission for only a few months now. But the 63-year-old retired salesman is no stranger to the Bayside or local politics.

Johnson took up residence in Santa Monica 18 years ago and has been active in civic service almost ever since, serving eight years on the Rent Control Board before joining the Planning Commission for the past four years.

But he came to know the issues and concerns of the Bayside long before that, visiting the Downtown frequently in his job as a wholesale rep for a national clothing company.

“I feel that background helps me to speak to many of the issues of the Bayside's retail tenants,” Johnson says.

Over the years, Johnson has championed various liberal social causes, but when it comes to the future of Santa Monica, his slow-growth approach is essentially conservative.

The Downtown is “one of the most sensitive areas in the city,” he says. That's why he wants only the best building projects to be allowed.

To achieve that, Johnson says he would support establishing a policy that limits the amount of construction that could be going on at any one time in the Downtown. This would minimize disruption in the area and create a system where “the best projects go first,” he says.

All proposed projects would be put on the table and looked at together; the ones with the most merit would get priority, Johnson says. Rejected projects would go “back into the hopper” for reconsideration at a later date.

Santa Monicans enjoy a high quality of life, the planning chair says, and preserving it is at the top of his agenda.

“Protection of what we've got is number one,” he says. “Number two is to talk about what we want to develop in the future.”

Johnson and the Planning Commission will play a key role in determining what that future will look like, reviewing projects and helping craft policies that will guide development for decades to come.

The City is more than halfway through an update of its General Plan. When the plan is completed in 2007, it will become the backbone of future building codes and land-use regulations.

As part of that update, the City recently released its Opportunities and Challenges report – a phone-book sized document Johnson calls “the basic building block of where the future of Santa Monica is being developed.”

The “report gives existing conditions and trends” which will inform policy decisions, he says. And as the City moves forward, he is keeping a line open to Downtown stakeholders.

“It's critical that they have a very strong voice representing themselves,” Johnson says.

“The City considers the Promenade arguably the very top asset, or near the top asset, that we have,” he says. He wants to make sure it stays that way.

Recalling an old joke about a place that is “so crowded that no one wants to go there,” he says plans must ensure that the popular pedestrian area doesn't “become a victim of its own success.”

“Once you improve a neighborhood, or any area, and it becomes too big, too packed, it goes downhill,” Johnson explains. “People say, 'I don't want to go there anymore.'”

To keep that from happening, Bayside and City officials are looking at ways to spread some of the foot traffic out to the surrounding area by energizing Second and Fourth streets.

In addition, plans to connect the Bayside to a redeveloped Civic Center that will have acres of parks and ground-floor shops will also enlarge the pedestrian zone, Johnson says.

Another idea that has been “bandied about,” he adds, is to create an alternative shopping magnet in the Light Manufacturing and Studio District on the opposite end of town, but this seems only a remote possibility for now.

On a more modest scale, Johnson has an idea of his own which he hopes will gain support.

Taking his cue from European cities, Johnson would like to see an art fair with food carts and entertainment in an alley behind the Promenade one or two nights a week.

“We could open up the alleys and clean them up for limited use so you create other venues and another experience,” he says. The idea made little headway when he offered it up a year ago, but he says he's willing to try again.