By: Oscar Gake
Recently I found the Coalition to Preserve L.A.’s twitter account and I’ve had a fun time using it to point out the hypocrisy.
Recently I found the Coalition to Preserve L.A.’s twitter account and I’ve had a fun time using it to point out the hypocrisy.
| For some reason they’ve written an article and held a press conference against the proposed 8th and Catalina tower in Koreatown, which has been in limbo for years. It seems unlikely this tower will be built any time soon but I still feel as though I must debunk their article, which is filled with faulty logic. Links to the article and another article about the tower are to the side. |
What in the heck is happening in Koreatown?
Community activists don’t want a 27-story, 269-unit residential high-rise to go up in a low-slung, working-class section of Koreatown. The city’s planning commission voted against the proposed skyscraper, with one commissioner describing it as “wildly inappropriate.” Yet Mayor Eric Garcetti, in a rare move, overturned the planning commission and approved the mega-project — but only after Beverly Hills developer Michael Hakim agreed to fork over $1 million to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Crazy, right?
Nope. Not crazy at all. Koreatown is the densest and most transit connected neighborhood in the city. There are already a few residential high-rises in the neighborhood about the same size as the proposed one (although the neighborhood is mostly made up of mid-rise apartment buildings.) The only reason this one is more controversial is because it is located on 8th Street, rather than two blocks North on Wilshire like the rest.
The Coalition to Preserve L.A. always acts as if they support the middle and lower classes, when in fact they don’t care about them at all. If you needed proof they don’t, it’s in the second to last sentence. Mayor Garcetti's decision got the Affordable Housing Trust Fund one million dollars yet the author thinks that's a bad thing.
The Coalition to Preserve L.A. always acts as if they support the middle and lower classes, when in fact they don’t care about them at all. If you needed proof they don’t, it’s in the second to last sentence. Mayor Garcetti's decision got the Affordable Housing Trust Fund one million dollars yet the author thinks that's a bad thing.
Today, Hakim is still trying to get final approvals for his mega-project with market-rate (meaning, “not very affordable”) housing. But, things are looking pretty darn good for him, and he can make millions and millions off the wildly inappropriate skyscraper.”
Well maybe market-rate wouldn’t mean “not very affordable” if groups like the Coalition to Preserve LA didn’t constantly stand in the way of residential development. They ignore or deny the fact that Los Angeles is in a severe housing shortage, causing rents to be very high. The only way to bring prices down again is to build more housing units and build them more densely. Simple economics.
(By the way, take a look at the picture below of the proposed site. The skyscraper would rise another 20 stories above that first palm tree. That “wildly inappropriate” remark is wildly accurate. Wow!)
And that’s a problem why? What you really should notice is that the proposed site is partly just a vacant lot just sitting there and not benefiting the community in any way.
The tower would also take up land that is currently comprised of a liquor store, a parking lot, and 3 apartment buildings which couldn’t comprise of more than 15 units by my estimate. Over all that’s a net gain of over 250 units which we badly need and $1 million for the city’s affordable housing fund, not to mention all the tax revenue it will generate for the city and the hundreds of jobs it will create for local labor.
The tower would also take up land that is currently comprised of a liquor store, a parking lot, and 3 apartment buildings which couldn’t comprise of more than 15 units by my estimate. Over all that’s a net gain of over 250 units which we badly need and $1 million for the city’s affordable housing fund, not to mention all the tax revenue it will generate for the city and the hundreds of jobs it will create for local labor.
“For this 27-story project to be built,” said Stewart at a press conference yesterday, “city officials will have to bend almost every rule in the book – but that happens every day at City Hall. The rigged system at City Hall rewards greedy developers and it is hard to beat. But the public can win and put new controls on reckless development if they vote for our measure when it gets on the ballot.”
Well Jill, you see the city’s zoning code is outdated as hell. If every rule in the book were followed, almost nothing would ever get built and rent and home prices in L.A. would be even higher than they already are. Although that’s what you want isn’t it? No growth and to screw over the poor. I’d respect you a lot more if you were honest and said that’s what the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is actually about. Stop pretending that you and the Coalition actually care about anyone other than yourselves.
The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative will impose a two-year moratorium on development projects that seek height, zoning and General Plan amendments — and require special handling, rule-bending and council intervention to go forward, such as Hakim’s.
This line has some typos. Let me fix them for you. It should read: The NIMBY Integrity Initiative will impose ridiculously outdated rules on development projects that will provide homes, jobs, and taxes for the city - and cause home prices and rents in Los Angeles to reach San Francisco levels.
These are the kinds of flagrantly obnoxious projects that overwhelm our traffic, our neighborhoods and our environment.
First off, we need to stop worrying about development projects causing slight increases in traffic. Second, dense residential projects do not “overwhelm…our neighborhoods and our environment.” They can turn blighted vacant lots into clean and pleasant places to be.
During this review process, citizens will have new opportunities to shape the rules of the road and the destinies of their communities.
Well see, we already basically have this because if NIMBYs scream, complain, and sue enough, dense residential projects may be cancelled, or at least significantly downsized. The Coalition to Preserve and the La Mirada Neighborhood Association do this regularly in Hollywood with the help of NIMBY lawyer Robert Silverstein.
There’s a lot on the line with overdevelopment and horrible land-use policy in L.A.
You seem to not know what horrible land use is. Horrible land use is crappy auto-oriented strip malls taking up the bulk of land on Los Angeles’s major boulevards. We’re fixing this mistake by building mixed use residential projects on these blighted eye sores. I think you need to get your eyes checked because you see the solution as the problem, and the problem as something that needs to be protected.
In Koreatown, Yoo said at the press conference that Hakim’s mega-project will result in the destruction of more than a dozen rent-controlled units and cause even more wreckage.
Yoo is acting more like a child than adult here. Here me out. What do children do when they have a problem with someone about how to do something? They scream and complain saying it’s either their way or the highway. Adults compromise. If Yoo is concerned about the destruction of rent-controlled units, which reasonably she should be, she should work with the developer and the city council to get him to provide affordable units in his new high-rise, which the current tenants of these rent-controlled units could eventually live in.
“If this project is built,” Yoo warned, “it will have a domino effect on the rest of the area. All of these mom-and-pop apartment buildings will be swept up by developers. The working families living in them will be evicted, and the developers will put up luxury housing.”
I’ve got to give credit where credit is due here. One of the reasons Koreatown is one of my favorite Los Angeles neighborhoods is because of its great mix of cool apartment buildings from different eras. I’d hate to see the neighborhood lose that. What we should do however, is grant more of them historical status to save them from being redeveloped. Not block all new development entirely. One of the great things about L.A. right now is that we can build new residential buildings without displacing anybody. We can build them on areas currently zoned for single use auto-oriented commercial development.
Vasquez added: “I’m not against all development, just irresponsible projects like this one. Unfortunately, many developers don’t have the best interests of the community in mind, and they’re ruining our community and filling the streets with their traffic. In Koreatown, we have a traffic crisis and a parking availability crisis created by too much development. When I get home from work, it’s often almost impossible for me to find a parking space. Many times I have to walk alone several blocks in the dark from my car to my apartment, and it’s scary.”
Are you kidding me? A traffic crisis? That is perhaps the most ridiculous first-world problem I’ve ever heard. Also you realize this is Koreatown we’re talking about? The densest and most transit connected neighborhood in the city. Now I don’t know where Ms. Vasquez works, but chances are she can commute there from Koreatown by public transit, thereby avoiding the problem of having to park three blocks away. As for having to walk alone in the the dark, I can understand that’s scary. What might make it less scary is knowing that since Koreatown is so dense, someone is bound to see or here if something were to happen to her, and come and help or call the police.
| Thanks for reading. You can follow me on twitter @boxbro39 for tweets of me debunking the Coalition to Preserve L.A.'s tweets, as well as other funny stuff. I'll be posting another article next Tuesday hopefully because Monday I will be attending a development review meeting for a proposed 14-story residential high-rise in Burbank, where I plan to speak in favor of the project. |
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