by Bob Pinzler
When a resident agrees to join a city commission or committee, they are not expected to be experts in the legalities of the issues they will be asked their opinion on. This is particularly true with respect to the complex and ever-changing area of city planning.
Every 25 years or so, cities revisit their General Plans, which set out the principles for land use, housing development, and open space policies. They are extremely complex documents, juggling the wishes of the local government to create the most felicitous quality of life rules, while state laws try to override them. Most of those laws are aimed at increasing the number of homes available. That is difficult to accomplish in a built-out city like Redondo Beach, but we were tasked to attain the goal.
Having been directly involved with two of these cycles, one in the 1990s as a Councilmember and this past time as a member of the Redondo Beach General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC), we have incorporated policies which, on the surface, seemed appropriate for the process. In the ’90s, it was mixed-use, where people “lived above the store,” with housing and retail sharing a property. For the most part, that scheme didn’t work. The housing was successful while the retail was not.
So, in this latest iteration, something else was needed to create opportunities to meet ever higher demands for housing units. The concept du jour for this go-round was the overlay zone. Essentially, it provided certain properties with two zoning options. In our case, it was commercial zones that could be converted to housing or, if necessary, share the space between them.
As we were not steeped in the law, we relied upon our consultants and attorneys to advise us of the legality of all the ideas we were coming up with. Other cities were instituting these zones, and it was considered to be a viable alternative to achieve the housing volume we required.
The housing portion of the Redondo Beach General Plan was deliberated and approved by the City Council. It was accepted by the State and was considered implemented when a challenge came in a court filing by a developer using a law known as “Builder’s Remedy,” under which developers can bypass local zoning restrictions and get housing projects approved, even if they don’t fully comply with the city’s zoning rules, as long as the city has not had its General Plan Housing Element certified by the state.
But hadn’t the Council approved the plan and hadn’t it been accepted by the State? A lower court said yes, but last week the Court of Appeals said no. The reason: the overlay zone. The Court said the zone was not a realistic one since it was highly unlikely that this property would ever be used for housing. Thus, the required housing numbers couldn’t be reached, and the State shouldn’t have approved them.
The City still believes they are correct and will likely appeal to the State Supreme Court. However, should they fail, our city will likely be transformed permanently. Then, the question would return to whether those who should have known this new “overlayfad” was untested had the responsibility to inform the GPAC of the potential for failure. We might have arrived at a different solution. ER
Thank you to former councilmember Pinzler for calling attention to the City’s high-risk general plan strategy. Risk management is very important, especially in legal filings that face scrutiny from millionaire and billionaire developers.
The City also failed to analyze its Floor Area Ratio scheme to increase the BCHD and Police Annex lots to FAR 1.25. According to lawyers for both BCHD and developers, the only way to increase the FAR for those 2 lots is to also increase the FAR for all similarly zoned lots. That includes all P-CF (BCHD zoning) and P-SF (the police annex on RBUSD property). That will allow dozens of parcels to be leased for high density uses.
Hopefully our new Director of Planning will have a better risk analysis than the prior one now up on PV.
No, staff absolutely did not let down Redondo Beach.
On November 14, 2022, there was a LA Times cover story titled “Crude emails reveal nasty side of a California beach city’s crusade to halt growth.” Todd Lowenstein stated on NBC news “Honestly, we’re already full…If you’re going to pick a place to have low to medium-income housing, are you going to put it next to the ocean, or are you going to put it inland?”
Your article fails to mention Todd Lowenstein, Zein Obaji and Nils Nehrenheim approved the housing plan while both Christian Horvath and Laura Emdee told City Council about this risk and voted against it. Christian and Laura both opposed the plan’s high-density zoning increases in North Redondo, as did many residents who were ignored. Laura express concern that concentrating housing near transit centers and freeways would lead to a worse Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Wasn’t it suggested by Laura and many residents to distribute the required housing more equitably across the city? In response it seems Laura was a victim of the “crude emails” highlighted in the LA Times, while City Council tried, and epically failed, to get Christian off City Council.
Everybody makes mistakes and hindsight is always 20/20; that is understandable. But Mr. Pinzler, blaming staff for your poor decisions is pathetic and weak. Own it and make constructive suggestions or risk being irrelevant. Redondo residents are voting in cooperative, constructive candidates versus those who relentless criticize, whine and blame others when they are wrong.