After many years of authorized battles, Santa Monica Airport will stop operations for good in 2028. For a lot of Santa Monicans, this little question appears like a double win. Not solely will they lastly be freed from the sound of jets and the scent of fumes, however the 227-acre airport website can also be on observe to turn out to be a public park.
However is that basically what’s greatest for Santa Monica?
The residents actually assume so; they handed Measure LC in 2014, which requires a public vote to repurpose airport land for something aside from public open area. The nonprofit group Airport2Park was based to appreciate this imaginative and prescient and enjoys the help of quite a few environmental and stakeholder organizations from the encompassing group.
Whereas inexperienced area is actually a extra interesting use of city land than a car parking zone for Harrison Ford’s airplane, the opening of a 227-acre lot on the Westside — near jobs, good colleges and transit — is a once-in-a-generation alternative.
Housing should be a part of the equation.
For the reason that Eighties, Santa Monica has authorised the development of thousands and thousands of sq. ft of workplace area, reworking it right into a hub for each the expertise and leisure industries, with a daytime inhabitants rising by greater than 150,000 folks. However this explosive job progress has not been accompanied by a proportional enhance in housing items.
The opening of a 227-acre lot on the west aspect — near jobs, good colleges and transit — is a once-in-a-generation alternative.
Santa Monica’s estimated inhabitants of 92,478 in 2019 was solely a rise over what it was in 1970, when 88,289 folks known as the town dwelling. This rising imbalance between jobs and housing has created an enormous inflow of every day commuters to Santa Monica (even well-compensated tech employees) who both cannot discover or cannot afford housing close to these job facilities. In the meantime, the inhabitants of neighboring jurisdictions has grown, displacing lower-income residents. The result’s that an increasing number of commuters are crowding the highways from more and more distant elements of Southern California.
Research have proven that the common Angeleno wastes greater than 100 hours every year caught in visitors. In addition they spend, on common, extra on hire relative to annual revenue than residents of nearly some other metropolis in the USA.
Santa Monica residents are infamous for preventing new housing of their group on the grounds that the inflow of residents will trigger visitors. However the imbalance between employment and residential density on the West Aspect is a main one trigger of visitors all through the area, together with in Santa Monica. Extra housing close to leisure and tech job facilities will ease visitors for everybody, particularly if officers use the 9 years till the airport closes to raised join the world with public transportation.
Though Los Angeles County is thought for being park-poor, residents of the Westside have extra entry to open area than a lot of Southern California. An estimated 87% of Santa Monica residents reside inside strolling distance of a park. Solely 61% of Angelenos can say the identical. Residents residing close to the Santa Monica Airport are particularly properly served, with Venice’s Penmar Park and Santa Monica’s Clover Park and Airport Park (which is slated for enlargement) all inside strolling distance.
That does not imply Santa Monica would not want new parks or that its redeveloped airport needs to be devoid of open area. However profitable city parks all over the world, akin to downtown LA’s Grand Park, are the “out of doors residing rooms” of the dense, mixed-use communities constructed round them.
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Grand Park was financed with a $50 million upfront cost from the developer of a neighboring challenge—a method Santa Monica might borrow to create open area at its airport whereas saving taxpayer cash. The 12-acre park opened in 2012 — almost seven years earlier than a residential or business challenge broke floor. Santa Monica officers might negotiate the same deal by which park area is assured to be funded and constructed on the airport, even when the personal improvement that pays for these parks is topic to delays.
Santa Monica rightfully considers itself on the forefront of progressive causes — notably the struggle in opposition to local weather change. The town is at the moment creating a Local weather Motion & Adaptation Plan, which lays out methods to scale back the town’s CO2 emissions to 80 % under 1990 ranges by the yr 2030. Nonetheless, based on UC Berkeley’s Carbon Footprint Planning Instrument, it’s far and away essentially the most promising technique to attain this objective. If the town is really dedicated to its objectives, housing improvement on the Santa Monica Airport, positioned alongside a number of bus traces and fewer than a mile south of the Expo line, is a major challenge.
Housing on the airport is at the moment rejected by Measure LC, so metropolis leaders should muster the political braveness to take the case to voters. They need a powerful argument.
Continued intransigence in constructing new housing will solely enhance greenhouse gasoline emissions—not simply in Santa Monica, however all through the area. If the town is dedicated to preventing local weather change, dedicating a portion of the 227-acre airport property to housing is smart, irrespective of how politically troublesome that could be.
Steven Sharp is the co-founder and editor of Urbanize.LA. Comply with him on Twitter @UrbanizeLA.
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