This is the second in a series of articles exploring opinions on the forthcoming Downtown Specific Plan
Tony Choueke would seem to have a lot to be upset about. As the owner of half a dozen commercial properties in downtown Manhattan Beach, he is among those most affected by temporary development limitations put in place as the city attempts to shape its downtown.
But Choueke, a regular at city council meetings, is consistently complimentary during public comment, focusing on what the body is doing right.
“I don’t think it’s helpful to be confrontational,” Choueke said.
Choueke’s calm, careful demeanor has made him a useful advocate for property owners. He serves as secretary of the Manhattan Beach Commercial Property Owners Association, and frequently discusses the issues facing the city with fellow property owners. Looming largest is the city’s preparation of the Downtown Specific Plan, a document that would govern future land-use decisions in the area.
The idea for a specific plan emerged due to concerns over the rapidly changing face of downtown. Banks and real estate offices were rapidly filling spaces once occupied by independent shops and boutiques; while these operations can reliably meet the area’s ever-increasing rents, they draw less foot traffic than restaurants and retailers, threatening the social energy of the area.
Development of the specific plan has been long and complicated. The city released a 300-page draft in March, and is set to release a Mitigated Negative Declaration draft of the document this Thursday. To prevent further change to the downtown area while the document was being developed, the city enacted a “moratorium” on land-use changes in July 2014.
The moratorium was extended a year later, and then replaced by an interim zoning ordinance in July of this year. The zoning ordinance has a similar effect, requiring a conditional use permit for commercial land-use changes in the area, and must be renewed every 45 days; the council unanimously voted to renew it at its August 16 meeting.
And while Choueke and other business owners have been cooperative in the process, they are concerned at the prospect of the interim restrictions being enshrined permanently in the specific plan.
“The problem with the moratorium is that it looks at the past; the specific plan is to address the future,” Choueke said. “The world is changing very rapidly. People looking at past models, thinking they are going to work in the future, are quickly going to be disabused of that notion.”
Choueke, who formerly worked in consumer trend forecasting for Wal-Mart, said that local retailers were victims of forces that reverberate far beyond the boundaries of Manhattan Beach. The explosive rise in online outlets like Amazon has cut deeply into the margins of brick-and-mortar retail stores, he said, and has transformed the way people view shopping.
“The idea of the moratorium is to prevent formula stores from coming in. But both formula and independent retailers face the same problem,” Choueke said, pointing to a string of bankruptcy filings in recent years for chains like Circuit City and Borders.
Supporters like Kelly Stroman, head of the Downtown Business and Professional Association say that the moratorium, and now the interim ordinance, have provided peace of mind, allowing businesses to invest in improvements they might otherwise hesitate to make due to uncertainty. But by limiting the types of uses that may come into downtown parcels, the zoning ordinance arguably serves to suppress rents in the area: rates that a bank could afford are unreachable for low-margin retailers.
When asked about the extent to which changes embodied in the moratorium threaten the bottom lines of local property owners, Choueke demurred, saying that his issue was the way the moratorium threatened the vitality of the town.
“When you try to have a planned economy rather than a market economy, it will be detrimental,” he said. “You run the risk of stagnation, that’s the problem.”
Councilmember Mark Burton, who helped spearhead the specific plan process, declined to say how the risk of “stagnation” was affecting the council’s progress on the specific plan, noting that the city’s Planning Commission still had several meetings to hold on the document. But he defended the original decision to impose the moratorium, noting that “quaint little downtowns” were disappearing all across the country, and said the decision helped preserve establishments locals depend on.
“If we hadn’t put the moratorium in place, we might have lost our downtown,” Burton said.
As part of preparing the specific plan, the city hired the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a Washington, D.C. nonprofit focused on land-use, to assess the downtown and provide recommendations. Tom Eitler, senior vice president of ULI’s advisory services program, said in an interview that while all retailers are facing challenges from the Internet, restrictions like those embodied in the moratorium have a place in zoning regulations.
“Our position was, there needs to be some consideration of incentives to get the right solution,” Eitler said. “ULI as an organization believes when you have the market decide everything, you have a problem. But the same thing is true when you let the community decide everything. The best scenario is where they intersect.”
In the event that the specific plan enshrines unfavorable aspects of the interim zoning ordinance into law, Choueke said property owners are unlikely to pursue a legal challenge. Instead, they are likely to simply pursue opportunities in other cities, leading to deterioration and disinvestment in Manhattan’s downtown.
“Those people who have the will, the creativity and the desire to make positive moves will make positive moves elsewhere,” he said. “There won’t be any motivation to improve.”
When asked what he would like to see in a future downtown, Choueke pointed to in-person services not vulnerable to being replaced by the Internet, such as lodging and eateries, and growing retail industries, like communications and health and fitness.
He also thinks that the city needs to attract more young residents, and could do so by permitting apartments above commercial properties in the downtown area. Such a move, he conceded, would require loosening parking requirements, an idea that has proven deeply unpopular among residents scrambling for extant spaces. But it may be preferable, he pointed out, to being overly reliant on tourists to supplement the bottom lines of downtown businesses.
“I don’t think the answer is to bring in more tourists,” Choueke said. “We don’t want this to look like Venice.”
As the specific plan goes through ongoing revisions, Choueke said some local property owners, had begun to favor scrapping the document entirely, returning to how things were before the moratorium. Choueke said he did not favor such an approach, agreeing that the city needed to provide guidance. Property owners would be willing to make some sacrifices, he said, but they must receive something in return.
“What commercial property owners feel is that they are being backed into a corner,” he said. “This deterioration of their rights may seem like a victory, but it will come back to haunt the city.”
