Now that plans for an “urban neighborhood” of 3,990 apartments on the site of the former Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park have been announced, there’s something we need to know.
Will those units have indoor plumbing?
It’s a fair question, considering that we’re under emergency water conservation measures and an executive order calling for a 20 percent cut in water usage by 2017. Just a few months ago the L.A. City Council voted to hit DWP water customers with a five-year rate hike along with punitive rate tiers to coerce residents to reduce usage.
The council is demanding that residents conserve electricity, too, recently approving a new five-year rate hike for power, also with higher rates for higher usage. In the triple-digit heat of the Valley this summer, skyrocketing DWP bills will be the cause of real suffering.
But Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who voted for the rate hikes, celebrated the announcement that nearly 4,000 apartments will be built at the corner of Victory Boulevard and Canoga Avenue. In 2014 he told this newspaper, “It’s a huge thing. What’s exciting about this is it’s transit oriented. It’s right in front of the Orange Line and will be connected to the Los Angeles River. It’s got all the modern buzz words associated with it about what smart planning is meant to be.” Also celebrating is the owner of the 47-acre site, United Technologies Corp. In the company’s 2015 annual report, CEO Gregory J. Hayes happily told shareholders that the company is “well-positioned” to benefit from “urbanization” thanks to its divisions that make elevators and air conditioners.
The mini-Manhattan planned for Victory and Canoga is only one of a multitude of apartment communities springing up on west Valley sites previously occupied by employers. Nearly 400 units were built on the De Soto Avenue property that formerly was Panavision. Three hundred units will replace the Off Broadway Shoes store on Topanga Canyon Boulevard that formerly was Tower Records. Over 600 units are planned for the Victory Blvd. site that was home to Catalina Yachts.
Currently there about 8,500 residential units in the 1.5 square-mile area between the 101 Freeway and Vanowen Street from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to De Soto Avenue, but that number could go as high as 26,408 under the Warner Center 2035 “specific plan” adopted by the City Council on October 23, 2013.
About a month before that, the state Assembly and Senate had quickly passed a bill, SB 743, to smooth the path for a new basketball arena to be built in Sacramento without being delayed by lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA.
Tacked onto that bill, and signed into law by Gov. Brown, was a provision that created an exemption from CEQA for some projects that are consistent with a “specific plan”—like the L.A. City Council’s Warner Center 2035 plan. SB 743 eliminated the need to evaluate aesthetic, parking and traffic-speed impacts of residential developments located within one-half mile of a “major transit stop,” whether existing “or planned.”
The Orange Line’s stations qualify as “major transit stops,” and if voters approve a proposed sales tax hike for a $120 billion transit expansion, we could see mega-apartment complexes spring up along every pencil line on Metro’s drawing board.
This is called “transit-oriented development,” an idea that sprang from the mind of San Francisco architect and urban planner Peter Calthorpe. He denounced suburban sprawl and called for walkable urban communities in a 1993 book titled, “The Next American Metropolis.”
The urban planners’ distaste for suburbs merged with climate fears to give birth to laws like the 2006 “Global Warming Solutions Act” and the 2008 “Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act.” Although this effort to marginally reduce one state’s greenhouse gas emissions has no effect on the earth’s climate, and no scientist claims that it does, these laws raise energy costs and force us toward Calthorpe’s vision: replacing the single-family home and car culture with an urban dreamscape of apartment towers near restaurants and train tracks.
But why is this considered progress? Perhaps you’d rather drive an air-conditioned car to In-N-Out Burger than walk to The Village to have an $18 hamburger under a tree. By what right does a politician force you to endure higher utility rates and slower traffic while developers “urbanize” your neighborhood?
A lot of people want an answer to that question. The Coalition to Preserve L.A. is circulating petitions for a citywide ballot measure called the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. It would put a two-year moratorium on oversized developments across Los Angeles and limit the City Council’s power to waive parking requirements and density limits. It needs about 65,000 signatures to qualify.
Some people think the initiative goes too far. But when elected officials show so little concern for the people they represent, that sometimes happens.
Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly. Reach the author at Susan@SusanShelley.com or follow Susan on Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.
This column has been amended to add a quote from L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield.
