Santa Monica Tries to Figure Out What to Do When Bergamot Station Becomes a Train Station Again

Photo by polaroid-girl via the LAist Featured Photos pool
Way back in 1875, the Bergamot Station in Santa Monica was actually a train stop for the Red Line that ran through Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier. Now the city of Santa Monica is trying to decide what to do in 2015 when the gallery space again becomes a train stop — this time for the new Expo Line.

The Expo Line will bring big changes: it will require the destruction of one gallery, and it will bring in tons of new riders. Now the Santa Monica Daily Press reports that planning department staff is wondering if the city should try to bring in some new, profitable businesses — like hotels and restaurants — to an area full of galleries that may be culturally rich but require subsidized rent to stay afloat. This talk of revenue around the arts of course makes some on the planning commission a little nervous.

Here are the three main options the planning department is considering, according to the Daily Press:

Option A would be adding a few new two or three-story buildings to the area but mostly preserving the footprint of Bergamot Station

Option B would be divvying up the parcels between a variety of owner-developers to allow the spaces to change organically as new owners come and go

Option C would preserve the eastern portion of the site and open up the western side for development, which could include buildings up to four stories tall, a proposed hotel and underground parking


The majority of speakers at the meeting said they prefer changing nothing at all about Bergamot Station or voting for option A, which would change the site as little as possible.

Ruthann Lehrer, who is on the commission, pointed out that there's already a large-scale development being planned right across the street from Bergamot at the transit village. She suggested that maybe that development will be enough to subsidize the arts across the street.

"I'm looking at the balance between this wonderful complex and the galleries, which we value a lot and all of the development that's taking place across the street," Lehrer said. "They're supposed to provide community benefits. That would provide some of the subsidy and support."
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Second EXPO Facility Workshop to be Held Tuesday

Source: http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2011/November-2011/11_29_2011_Second_EXPO_Facility_Workshop_to_be_Held_Tuesday.html

By Lookout Staff

November 29, 2011 -- Santa Monica residents will get a chance to weigh in Tuesday night on the future use for a buffer zone the City will create adjacent to the EXPO maintenance facility.

The meeting co-sponsored by the City and the Pico Neighborhood Association provides residents with an opportunity to help shape the area facing Santa Monica's poorest and most diverse residential area.

The meeting held at Virginia Avenue Park's Thelma Terry Center will include a brief overview of the project and a discussion of the community's expectations for the buffer zone, City officials said. Participants will help "create a vision" and "define the next steps."

The meeting also will include a recap of the first meeting held in September, where residents weighed in on two redesigned versions of the Expo Line maintenance facility that will soon go up in their backyard.

At that meeting, Metro representatives asked residents to “identify a preferred site scenario” for the facility, which residents opposed when the site at Stewart Street and Exposition Boulevard was first proposed in 2009.

The also presented two designs that moved the main and service entrances off of Exposition Boulevard, directing traffic to enter from Stewart Street or Centinela Avenue. The new designs also moved the “buffer” zone to Exposition Boulevard from Stewart. In both plans, none of the facility's buildings would be taller than 30 feet.

The Expo Light Rail is expected to roll into Santa Monica in 2015.

To ensure accurate accommodations email lindsey.haley@smgov.net or call 310.458.8301. Virginia Avenue Park is served by Big Blue Bus line 7 and Rapid 7. Visit www.BigBlueBus.com for times.

There is limited free parking and plenty of bike parking available.

Expo Phase II kickoff meetings draw numerous, engaged participants

Posted by Carter Rubin

May 12, 2011 - 3:15 pm

The meeting kicked off with an overview of the Expo Light Rail project.

On Monday and Wednesday this week, the Expo Construction Authority held open house-style community meetings to introduce Westside residents to the Expo Phase II construction process and the contracting team, Skanska/Rados. The second phase of the Expo Line will connect Culver City and downtown Santa Monica.

As a Source writer, Westside resident and eager awaiter of Expo’s completion, I decided to check out yesterday’s event in Cheviot Hills. I wasn’t alone. My rough headcount found upwards of 150 others — on top of the 200-plus who attended Monday’s meeting in Santa Monica.

Wednesday’s meeting started off with a presentation — available here [PDF] — by Gaby Collins of the Expo Authority, in which she discussed the design-build timetable, the various construction elements and the how the community can have input on the project.

Community members pour over ariel photos with an Expo representative.

From there, the Phase II project manager for Skanska/Rados, Mike Arpacio, introduced the team that will be leading the construction operation. Then, Arpacio pivoted to discuss the various mitigation measures that will be undertaken to reduce the impacts of noise, dust and traffic during the construction period.

As community members then began mingling through the display tables, it was apparent that such concerns were at the front of many minds, mixed in with excitement about connecting the Westside to the beach and downtown L.A.

What impressed me most was how engaged and detail-oriented many individuals were. Even those who weren’t bonafide transit geeks (a term of endearment) wanted to know about station design, parking, grade crossings and the whole suite of elements that make a transit line an important fixture of the community.

Going forward, initial construction work — namely utility relocation — will soon get under way, while the contracting team wraps up the final designs for Expo Phase Two. Along the way, there will be more opportunities for community input, so stay tuned for more meetings. A great way to do so is to follow the official Expo Facebook page and Twitter feed to receive important updates.

The majority of the Expo Phase II project is being paid for with funds from Measure R, the sales tax increase approved by 68 percent of L.A. County voters in 2008.

-- Carter Rubin

Commentary: I have never seen the total blurring of the distinction between journalism and editorials. Here, we have a writer publishing an opinion piece and it's not mentioned anywhere in this newpaper that it's an opinion piece. This is one worst examples of writing I have seen lately. After reading a number of articles, the consistent theme is knee-jerk NIMBYism and opposition to any change. Cities grow and change just like people do. After all, cities are populated by people.

Santa Monica Dispatch » Blog Archive » City “Solution” Far Worse Than Problem

City “Solution” Far Worse Than Problem
By: Peggy Clifford
Published: May 7th, 2009

These days, when City Hall people speak of “improvements,” “enhancements,” “beautification,” or ‘opportunity,” an ever-increasing number of residents shudder seismically.

Too often, City “improvements,” “enhancements,” “beautifications” and “opportunities” have turned out to be MORE of something we need less of.

“Less” is a concept that City Hall rejected some time ago. Invariably, quantity tops quality, trendy trumps style, and confusion smothers clarity.

Only City Hall people would see the prospect of a light rail station in the most congested area of the city as “an exciting opportunity.”

We’re speaking of the area where what City Hall now calls the “Station District,” the “Civic Center District” and the “Downtown District” converge. Not so long ago, neither downtown nor the Civic Center were “districts,” and they didn’t converge. They were separated by the10 freeway. It was a clean and useful break, as it held the downtown commercial commotion at bay and prevented the traffic tsunami from rolling across the Civic Center and swamping Ocean Park.

The Civic Center has long been a kind of oasis in the midst of the rising hubbub. wide, open, pleasantly aloof, coherent.

But, for all its crooning about open space, City Hall abhors nothing so much as passive land, and, in 1993, it commissioned a Civic Center Specific Plan. Since then, the Plan has been revised regularly — with each iteration more muddled and misbegot. At the same time, it began adding buildings that in design, scale and location insulted the original buildings.

The latest iteration of the Plan includes a multi-million-dollar remodel of the Civic Auditorium, as well as a kind of joint use partnership with Santa Monica High School, facilities. The school campus is just across Fourth Street from the Civic Center, and is now part of the “Civic Center District.”

Owing solely to City Hall’s continuing inability or unwillingness to commit itself to preserving the unique character of the Civic Center, it has been in planning limbo or more than a decade.

The Santa Monica Pier has always been a major traffic attraction. City Hall’s decision to brace the pier with Santa Monica Place and “hotel row” and to spend millions promoting this fabled beach town as a “regional commercial hub” and romper room were the genesis of Santa Monica’s now-legendary gridlock.

In 1996, in response to residents’ mounting complaints, then-planning director Suzanne Frick announced that a “comprehensive” traffic plan was in the works. But, 13 years have passed, Frick decamped for Long Beach several years ago, and no such plan has ever appeared, because City Hall is much better at cause than effect.

Specifically, according to City Hall, this latest “exciting opportunity” deals with an “anticipated increase in pedestrian activity” by making radical changes in “the patterns of traffic and movement in the downtown area…that incorporates additional park areas, smooth circulation with pedestrian, bicycle and transit access, and a vibrant gathering space, while simultaneously achieving the goals in the Civic Center Master Plan, the LUCE Strategic Framework and Creative Capital.”

The most striking, and ominous, aspect of this plan is the weight it gives the station, and the license it gives City Hall to remake the heart of Santa Monica.

Downtown Santa Monica and the Civic Center can fairly be called “districts,” but the proposed station certainly doesn’t rate the designation on its own. Clearly, it’s not just a station to City Hall, it’s salvation, and it will require millions of dollars and spreading rather than reducing the congestion.

The “Station District” at Fourth and Colorado, will inject more pedestrians into the Downtown District, which is already choking on traffic of every sort. It will add a plaza at the station, as well as “wider and improved pedestrian access routes between the Santa Monica Pier, the beach and the Civic Center,” and a trolley or shuttle from the station to the Pier and back.

It will also “modify the grid” by adding a new street from the Freeway’s Fourth Street off-ramp to divert freeway traffic away from the station – and, not incidentally, from downtown Santa Monica. Thus, motorists would have to go south into the Civic Center and/or Ocean Park in order to go north into downtown Santa Monica.

This “modification” will displease drivers, Ocean Park residents and downtown business owners, but this plan isn’t about pleasing people.

It would be far simpler to close the Fourth Street off-ramp, which is it a branch of the Fifth Street off-ramp, and wave everyone off at Fifth. But this plan isn’t about simplicity either.

And why is the station on Fourth anyway? Some years ago, the City paid $34 million for the Sears auto shop for some sort of transit station.
At the time, we wondered at the efficacy of locating it hard by the principal downtown freeway exit.

Since the light rail is still five years away, the City could find a more functional location, but, as we have learned, City Hall people would rather change Santa Monica than change their collective mind.

The plan also calls for creating more open and park space, by “capping” a portion of the freeway east from McClure tunnel in order to “reconnect” the Civic Center District’s green space with the Downtown District’s ungreen space.
Surely decking the freeway and calling it open or park space amounts to consumer fraud—especially since the Downtown District has been connected to the Civic Center District for decades by the landmark Main Street bridge, so “reconnection” via the freeway deck would also be redundant…and utterly mad — especially when the bogus open space is less than a block from the ocean.

In fact, this plan is an absolutely perfect recipe for terminal gridlock, AKA chaos. . In that sense, it does fulfill the primary goal of the Civic Center plan and the LUCE “Strategic Framework to impose “urban form” on this beach town. After all, nothing is more urban than gridlock.

Ironically, the accumulating hustle and bustle at its perimeter has isolated the Civic Center, and, if the plan is approved, could cut it off entirely. If City Hall is bent on diverting freeway traffic away from the station, how does it plan to route the 2200-plus City employees and 1100-plus RAND workers, the residents of the planned 364-unit monster “Village” project, and audiences coming and going from the revamped Civic Auditorium? They can’t go north on Fourth, and will only be able to go south on Main. If and when Olympic Drive is extended from Main to Ocean Avenue, they can enter the great coastal traffic jam and creep north or south. Or they can choose the east-bound freeway crawl.

In trying to do so many things, the plan fails to do the one thing it should do, which is to integrate the light rail station and riders into the downtown mix.

No one knows, with any certainty, how many riders there will be. City Hall estimates the current daily transient population at 300,000. Some of them will undoubtedly prefer light rail to buses and/or driving. Since this light rail line begins in downtown Los Angeles and travels west well south of the 10 freeway, riders are more apt to be workers than, say, Bloomingdale shoppers, and more apt to arrive in downtown Santa Monica at 8 a.m. than noon. In addition, more riders may disembark at the 17th Street station on their way to jobs at the hospitals or classes at the college. This is all pure speculation. But City Hall’s radical, elaborate and expensive plan is based on speculation, too. The difference is that the planners choose to imagine hordes, mobs of riders, and we don’t.

Welcome to Santa Monica, the city with the highest number of NIMBYs in the universe.

Curbed LA: Santa Monica Resident on the Coming Pedestrian Tsunami

Santa Monica Resident on the Coming Pedestrian Tsunami
Thursday, May 7, 2009, by Neal Broverman



News of the Expo Line reaching Santa Monica by 2014 has been music to most Westsider's ears. Well, count writer Peggy Clifford not among the elated. In a commentary in the Santa Monica Dispatch, Clifford blasts the coming design modifications that will coincide with Expo, including added park space, a remodel of the Civic Auditorium, pedestrian access routes between the Santa Monica Pier, the beach and the Civic Center, and possibly a freeway cap park. Basically, Clifford equates added pedestrian traffic to gridlock, saying "After all, nothing is more urban than gridlock." Some more quotes from Peggy: "Only City Hall people would see the prospect of a light rail station in the most congested area of the city as 'an exciting opportunity.' "The 'Station District' at Fourth and Colorado, will inject more pedestrians into the Downtown District, which is already choking on traffic of every sort." "City Hall estimates the current daily transient population at 300,000. Some of them will undoubtedly prefer light rail to buses and/or driving. Since this light rail line begins in downtown Los Angeles and travels west well south of the 10 freeway, riders are more apt to be workers than, say, Bloomingdale shoppers, and more apt to arrive in downtown Santa Monica at 8 a.m. than noon." Clifford also blasts the proposed 364-unit Village development on Ocean Avenue.
· City Solution Far Worse Than Problem [Santa Monica Dispatch]
· The Village at Santa Monica, Part II [Curbed LA]