Downtown office use, retail curtailed in Manhattan Beach
After a nearly two year wait and $1.4 million spent in hopes of California Coastal Commission approval, the City Council Tuesday night abandoned its attempts at a comprehensive Downtown Specific Plan. Instead, the council began a more piecemeal zoning approach, adopting an urgency ordinance that will limit ground floor office uses and prohibit large retail stores.
“We have spent a lot of money on this. What are we getting for that?” said Councilperson Nancy Hersman. “We are not getting anything for that. We can take specific things out of the Specific Plan that we want, have an ordinance, and be done with it.”
“It’s a waste of time and money,” said Councilperson Richard Montgomery. “We are $1.4 million in and [still] going, fighting the Coastal Commission. You may never win that fight, and they will bleed you dry.”
Community Development director Anne McIntosh, earlier in the meeting, informed the council that Coastal Commission staff recently sent the city 14 pages of notes that included 17 recommended changes to the Specific Plan that would take another year to implement. Though a full detailing of those suggestions will not be presented until August, part of the commission staff’s recommendations had to do with short-term rentals, which was never a part of the Specific Plan discussion.
“This is, once again, the Coastal Commission staff run amok,” said Councilperson Steve Napolitano, referring to Coastal Commission staff.
The Downtown Specific Plan emerged from a process that began in 2014 when the council, concerned by the increasing proliferation of banks and real estate offices, engaged the Urban Land Institute to gather community input and make recommendations for preserving the small-business charm of the city’s downtown.
After dozens of meetings on the topic, the Downtown Specific Plan was approved by Council in December 2016. The plan limited office use to second stories and frontages facing alleys, prohibited retail stores larger than 1,600 sq. ft., and banned second story outdoor dining. Coastal Commission staff deemed the plan complete in June 2017, and later that summer, in August, asked for a one-year extension to process the plan, suggesting to city staff it would finish its work by last December. Instead, last week the city was informed significant changes would be required, a process that would also significantly delay implementation.
The council had adopted a moratorium preventing more office use, which expired on July 5. In late June, Hersman suggested an urgency ordinance as a precursor to permanent ordinances. The Specific Plan would have adopted the same changes but not required the city’s Conditional Use Permit process, but in so doing fell under the city’s Local Coastal Plan — which is under the purview of the Coastal Commission. Thus a plan intended to streamline planning processes had the opposite result, due to the Coastal Commission staff’s objections.
Councilman David Lesser, who along with Mayor Amy Howorth was on the council when the Specific Plan was adopted, noted that he’d suggested a simpler approach three years ago. He called the commission’s latest objections “a bombshell” and again urged a simpler approach.
“I was the only council member opposed to the ULI and highly skeptical of a Specific Plan, precisely because what has come to happen,” Lesser said.
But Lesser also said that the ULI process had indeed given the city guidance, in terms of broad public input, and said that those wishes could largely be preserved by adopting a more piecemeal planning approach.
“I appreciate the process put in place through ULI to hear from residents and businesses regarding downtown,” Lesser said in an interview. “It was inclusive and shaped the policies. But I thought we could get there without the time, expense and challenges of having a larger plan adopted.”
The council unanimously adopted an urgency ordinance regarding the regulation of office and retail use and will revisit permanent ordinances on August 7, along with a separate ordinance addressing second story outdoor dining.
“I think that sometimes simple is better, and that is what we have come to here,” said Napolitano. “We all have grand plans, but sometimes — often times — those plans end up on the shelf.”