By Richard Garvey
Rebuttal to Jason Teague, Architect of 1414 Main:

It is no mystery why nearly every resident within a 2-3 block radius of 1414 Main Street opposes real estate developer Jason Teague’s proposal to erect a 4-story, mixed-use development on the property: the 26-unit retail/condominium complex is grossly out of scale and character with our community, and will negatively impact the quality of life for all its neighbors.

After all, these are the Venice residents who would be cast into shadow by Teague’s folly, and see the developer’s “new-urbanism” for what it is – a hollow attempt to turn the singular charm of Venice into a cookie-cutter copycat of Marina del Rey or the business district of downtown Santa Monica. Teague recklessly misrepresents the surrounding community’s opposition to his plans as anti-development or anti-growth (and even more preposterously anti-parking!), which is patently untrue, and only serves to sow further distrust amongst his neighbors. Everybody respects Teague’s right to erect something on his property, but the bottom line is that it must comply with the Venice Specific Plan and the Los Angeles Zoning Regulations, which were put in place by the California Coastal Commission and city planners to protect the historic character of Venice and the quality of life for all its residents.

With a brazenly selective interpretation of California State Law 1818 (i.e., the Affordable Housing Law), which was designed to protect the less fortunate among us, the mixed-use developer is attempting to hoodwink everybody into believing he and his partners have a lawful right to height and density bonuses which not only spit in the face of the Venice Specific Plan but are solely intended for residential projects. Sadly, this act of deception is but one of many by the developers which also include the price and availability of public parking, the lack of adequate infrastructure in the neighborhood to support the project, efforts to classify Main Street as a highway, and an astonishing array of off-menu requests.

In recent meetings with local residents as part of a public relations campaign laughably called “community outreach,” these same developers have refused to take into account any of the community’s well-founded concerns, and even urged longtime residents to “just move” if they didn’t like the project. They’ve challenged the idea that Venice has a particular identity, insisting, in fact, that it lacked character and needed “to evolve.” If any of the legendary character of Venice (arguably a national treasure and a certifiable international tourist attraction) has gone missing of late, it is precisely because short-sighted and purely profit-driven developers such as these, without any respect for Venice’s unique character, have been busy erecting character-free, hi-density buildings that disregard the nearby communities and serve to obliterate the history and identity of Venice, while lining their pockets with profits.

Despite Teague’s assertions that he is saving the neighborhood from its parking woes by building a 3-story, subterranean, automated parking structure (effectively making this a 7-story behemoth), every resident knows the project would greatly increase the amount of traffic in the surrounding residential neighborhood and severely impact parking availability on all nearby streets. One need only look to other examples around Venice of buildings which offer parking (e.g., Lemonade and Café Gratitude) to recognize just how empty this promise of relieving the parking problem is. Those garages often remain empty while customers and employees comb the surrounding streets in search of parking. Teague’s plans to sell ‘excess’ parking to restaurants, stores and office buildings in the area leaves even fewer spaces for tenant guests and his own stores and restaurants, yet he somehow still promotes this fantasy that his development won’t have serious repercussions on traffic and neighborhood parking.

Safety concerns are especially worrisome about heavy traffic and congestion on nearby narrow streets and alleys that cannot accommodate two-way traffic and are literally the lifelines of the neighborhood. For the vehicles that do end up using the parking structure, the absence of a Main Street entrance effectively turns Market Street, Horizon Avenue, Riviera Avenue, and the two narrow residential alleys that run between them into the development’s driveways. Once one factors in the steady stream of garbage and delivery trucks, and the waiting line to get into the paid parking garage, the resulting bottleneck could potentially be the difference between life and death.

On Toledo Court, alone, the developers are proposing that a full 40% of the property’s daily traffic of nearly 400 cars and trucks enter and exit through a narrow, block-long, residential alley that is only 15′ wide. Two mid-size cars sandwiched side-by-side measure almost 14′ from side-view mirror to side-view mirror. What happens when a full-size car and an SUV are trying to pass in the alley? What happens when there are 15-20 cars filled with beachgoers in the residential alley all at once on a hot summer day waiting for a parking slot to open up?

What happens in the case of a fire or emergency?

In proposing a paid parking plan that effectively commercializes the main arteries of a residential neighborhood so they can maximize their profits, the developers not only devalue the quality of life of all its surrounding residents, they risk their very lives.

Speaking of safety, with the host of difficulties faced doing deep excavation 40′ below sea level on beach lagoon property that has a high risk of liquefaction, danger assessment studies are imperative on the seismic and structural impact of the project’s pile-driving and dewatering processes on nearby homes and structures, many of them built in the early 1900’s at the historic dawn of Abbot Kinney’s Venice. Likening the effect to a sustained series of violent earthquake tremors, reports from residents living adjacent to similar deep excavation projects include cracks in ceilings and walls, and catastrophic damage to building foundations.

With construction optimistically expected to go on every day for over 18 months (which in all likelihood means 2-3 years), local residents and business owners must have every assurance that the sustained insult to the integrity of their homes and nearby historical Venice properties does not result in irreversible damage that forever changes the face of the community, not to mention the health and well-being of the buildings’ occupants should any of those buildings collapse. Liability extends to the city for endorsing such a dangerous plan.

Teague pins the need to dig such a deep, expensive ($5m) hole on the fact that his building is going to be so tall – tall enough, in fact, to exceed the historic area’s nearly sacred 35′ height restrictions by an entire 11′ story, in addition to rooftop decks. Otherwise, his profit margins won’t be wide enough. There are a number of obvious solutions to this problem (namely, don’t build it so tall, and you won’t have to dig it as deep), but there is a more pernicious threat hidden in Teague’s reasoning: he expects the neighborhood to pay for his profit margin with a dramatic drop in its quality of life.

The 35′ height limit was set in place by the City Council and the Coastal Commission to protect both the heritage of Venice and the quality of life for all its residents, not just those who can afford multi-million dollar condos. While we each live in Venice for our own particular reasons, it’s safe to say the basic elements we are afforded here – sunlight and an ocean breeze – are among the most treasured. They are so ingrained in the Venice lifestyle; fact is we often take them for granted….until they’re gone. A development of this scale, bulk and density would indeed get them gone, and is more appropriate to downtown Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, or next to the Grove in midtown than it is here. It will have a dramatic impact on neighbors in every direction, and sets a dangerous precedent for the historic community’s future. Don’t let it happen.

Sign the petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/save-our-historic-neighborhood-from-the-proposed-real-estate-development-at-1414-main-street-venice-ca-90291