Blogs

Urban Land Institute, it's time you and me had a serious chat about your awards criteria.

As the foremost trade group of real estate developers, I find value in many of your publications and programs. And I find it understandable that you would laud large-scale development projects. Making projects is your businesses.

But when you give a national award to a very questionable project like LA Live, the entertainment-and hotel complex that covers nearly 20 acres of downtown Los Angeles, it shows that your regard for urban quality comes second place to your round-eyed puppy love for big developers and big plans.

Property taxes collected by redevelopment agencies provide the largest ongoing source of funding for low- and moderate-income housing development in California – about $1 billion annually. How agencies account for and spend that money may be about to change in light of a state Senate investigation and front-page newspaper stories.

It's no secret that car sales are down these days, and that this downturn is causing a problem for cities in California. But based on a panel I participated in on Friday at the Westside Urban Forum in Los Angeles, I'd say the problem facing cities is a little more nuanced than I thought.

And it suggests that, with a rapidly changing retail market, cities have to move into a whole new generation of thinking not just about car dealers but about retailers generally.

The state Capitol is one weird place. Sometimes, I'm not sure if it's even of this earth. 

At the moment when you think major redevelopment "reform" is on the horizon, state lawmakers instead rewrite inconvenient laws that were getting in the way of San Diego's desire to use redevelopment financing to build a football stadium, including a law requiring increased funding for affordable housing.

Much has been written about the economic potential of alternative energy. So the proposal to build a 7,000-acre solar farm in Riverside County near Blythe struck me as notably promising. The new plant would be capable of generating 1,000 Mw, or more than all the photovoltaics that have been so far installed in California, according to a recent New York Times article.     

After months of stakeholder meetings, speculation, and preliminary reports, the California Air Resources Board has finally adopted official targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as mandated by SB 375. The targets were announced this past Thursday, Sept. 23, in compliance with the law's Sept. 30 deadline. 

The proposed Saltworks project in Redwood City is, as one of its designers says, a potential "game changer" for the Bay Area. Proposed by landowner Cargill and developer DMB, the project would provide 8,000 to 12,000 high-density, mixed-income housing units in a decidedly suburban town halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, and within close proximity to hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The Bay Area has seen similar projects in recent years, but they have been in San Jose and San Francisco proper. Even those suburbs that have embraced relatively dense, transit-oriented development haven't seen anything on the scale of Saltworks.

At about 10:30 this morning, I stepped out of my office a block from Main St. in Ventura to get a cup of coffee. Almost immediately, I noticed something different.

The parking lot on Oak Street, usually two-thirds empty in the morning, was mostly full. And the on-street parking spaces along Oak and Main Street, which are mostly occupied on a typical morning at this time, were mostly vacant.

I was trying to figure out a way to summarize the 2009-2010 session of the California Legislature when I found a summary upon which I could not improve.

In its September 3 edition of "Framing the Issues," the affordable housing advocacy group California Housing Law Project nailed the situation. Under the headline "No Budget … No Money … No Legacy … Failed Policy," was this:

Maybe there is reason to hope we can get development right in the future.

That's the conclusion I draw after looking over the list of projects that the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) recently named "catalyst projects." It's largely rhetoric, the state has put its seal of approval on -- and given valuable publicity to -- some promising, progressive projects. In general, projects are mixed-use, mixed-income infill projects that attempt – to varying degrees – to de-emphasize the automobile and improve the public realm. It's nice to see the state recognize the planning behind such projects, even if the state isn't willing to attach much money to that recognition.

My nephew and his wife recently had their second child, and they are following a well-worn path from the city to the suburbs.

Four years ago, childless and carless, they lived the urban life in the fashionable Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Cleveland Park. Child No. 1 pushed them four miles out, to the expensive inner Maryland suburb of Bethesda, where they bought a cozy two-bedroom condominium that had been converted from an apartment. Then, a couple of months ago, Child No. 2 pushed them another 12 miles farther out – beyond the Beltway – to Rockville, where they bought a four-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house.

A California Environmental Quality Act amendment that could ease Walmart's entry into new markets appears to be speeding toward approval in the state Legislature.

Assembly Bill 1581 (Torres) would exempt from CEQA review the alteration of a vacant retail structure of up to 120,000 square feet so long as the use is consistent with the applicable general plan and meets certain energy and water efficiency thresholds. The exemption would sunset on January 1, 2014.

By John Kaliski

John Chase, best known to many as urban designer for the City of West Hollywood for the past 14 years – even as he was recorder of all things architectural throughout Los Angeles – passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday, Aug. 13. Over the next few weeks and months I will be re-reading his many articles, essays, and books not only to keep alive his memory but to remind myself of his vivacious and educative voice, which was at once keen, enthusiastic, insightful, humorous, sardonic, always observant, attentive to his audience (whether it was a crowd or just an individual), and loving.

In early 2009, I wrote a story about the City of Bell's plan to lease 15 acres it had recently purchased to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad for use as a truck yard. An environmental organization had successfully sued to block the project because Bell did not complete an environmental review.

As you no doubt know, Bell has been in the news lately for gross levels of corruption at the elected and staff level. Now, the Los Angeles Times has revealed that Bell is unable to pay back a $35 million debt that was issued for the railroad truck yard project. Standard & Poor's has placed Bell on a credit watch list.