The Land Use and Planning Committee will hear a Google expansion project and a proposed restaurant project at 320 Sunset at the March meeting on the 5th. The meet will be held at Oakwood Recreation Center, 767 California, starting at 6:45 pm.

Google will also hold a public outreach meeting at 340 Main St, Saturday, March 1, at 3 pm regarding proposed Google project for 320 Hampton Drive.

Google did try to go thru the California Coastal Commission prior to going thru the Venice Neighborhood Council Land Use and Planning Committee. They were turned down. See letter following written by VNC President Linda Lucks to California Coastal Commission addressing such.

Dear Commissioners:
After reviewing what little information we have been able to obtain, the Venice Neighborhood Council requests the removal of this case from the 2/13/14 Consent Calendar and allow it to be publicly heard through the normal Coastal Development Permit process.

We have reached out to the applicant’s representative, who indicated they would consider sharing information with our neighborhood council, but not until after your hearing on February 13. However, for our comments on this project to have any value, time is required to review the project before the permit is issued, not after you have made a decision.

In brief, what we know is that the project is located two blocks from the beach in the northern end of Venice. The application talks about adding 13,220 SF of mezzanine to an existing 68,573 SF building and it being less than 10% increase. The numbers do not appear to be accurate. The application describes how the 170 required parking stalls will be substituted by 160 bicycles and 10 cars to meet the parking demand. This is in an area where parking is much worse than very scarce, and all this in the shadows of the applicant’s other building improvements across the street where one
entire existing parking lot was removed to create an outdoor theater and garden and more than 10 public parking spaces were removed from the street for new driveway cuts. We can’t understand how the City would sign-off on all of these requests without any public comment. Furthermore, we question how it is possible for this project to span multiple properties, all with separate owners, without any conditions being recorded on the land.

We welcome Google into to our community, but we also believe that everyone should be held to the same standards and codes.

Please remove project from your consent calendar and request that it proceed through the normal public hearing Coastal Development Permit process.

320 Sunset Ave

The property at 320 Sunset is a 6000 square-foot (sf) lot with a 5040 square-foot building zoned for office. Applicant wants to rezone for 5040 restaurant with 245 for retail sales. They also want to serve a full line of alcoholic beverages plus they would like to sell beer and wine for off-site sales. They will have a service area of 900 sf with 90 patrons of which 25 will be indoors and 65 within an outdoor patio. Operating hours would be 6 am to 1 am.

Application says for parking there are “20 non-conforming credits.”

West LA Planning hearing officer is Jojo Pewsawang, 213-978-1214, jojo.pewsawang@lacity.org. It is case ZA2013-3376(CDP)(CUB)(SPP). Applicant is Fran Camaj.

320 Hampton, Google
Applicant wants to add 13,220 square feet of office mezzanine to an existing 68,573 square foot office building. Application says this would be less than 10 percent increase in occupant load (1709 occupants for entire complex a max of 2011 occupants permitted) and the additional parking required.

Required additional spaces should be 53. Existing parking is 159 spaces; bike spaces unknown. A total of 170, 11 new, will be provided with 168 bicycle spaces. (Bike spaces, according to Google figures equate to a 42-space equivalent)