SR 11-28-2017 3M
City Council Report
City Council Meeting: November 28, 2017
Agenda Item: 3.M
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: David Martin, Director, City Planning
Subject: Award Contract to Walker Parking Consultants/Engineers Inc. to prepare a
Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council:
1. Award RFP #140 to Walker Parking Consultants/Engineers Inc., a California -
based company, for consulting services to prepare a parking study that ensures
adequate parking for all Civic Center uses, including development of the Civic
Center Multi-Purpose Sports Field, and continued access to the coastal area.
2. Authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with Walker
Parking Consultants/Engineers Inc, in an amount not to exceed $136,305 for one
year, with two additional one-year renewal options on the same terms and
conditions, with future year funding contingent on Council budget approval.
Executive Summary
Conducting a parking study will address Coastal Commission concerns that
replacement of the surface parking lot in the Civic Center with the new Multipurpose
Sports Field might indirectly impact coastal access. The study will assume the
completion of projects currently or soon to be under construction (the City Services
Building and the Early Childhood Lab School) and resumed operation of the Civic
Auditorium in the future. The Civic Center Specific Plan (CCSP) has long anticipated
utilizing this public land for recreational use, based on construction of the shared
parking structure at 4th Street and Olympic Drive, which added 770 public parking
spaces as well as below-grade public safety parking levels that provide secure parking
and storage for City police and fire vehicles.
A Request for Proposals (RFP) was released on October 10, 2017 to procure
consultants who will prepare a two-part study that will analyze the needs of current and
future Civic Center users and suggest options for best use and management of the
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parking resources at or near the Civic Center. The study will examine supply and
alternative locations, transportation demand management (TDM) best practices, pricing
mechanisms, and operational scenarios, which in combination are intended to provide
sufficient parking resources for all Civic Center uses. The second part of the study will
analyze the effect, if any, of the project on coastal access, an important issue to resolve
as the project will require California Coastal Commission approval of a Coastal
Development Permit (CDP).
Staff recommends awarding an agreement to Walker Parking Consultants in an amount
not to exceed $136,305. Staff anticipates completion and release of the first part of the
study, with recommendations for optimal parking management, next spring. Part II
(Coastal Access Analysis) will be released later in the summer, consistent with the
Multipurpose Sports Field project schedule last presented to Council on September 26,
2017, for project completion by early 2021.
Background
The 1993 CCSP envisioned a long-range transformation of the Civic Center to provide
public facilities and amenities, including utilizing a large portion of the land currently
used for surface parking for recreational use. While the CCSP initially envisioned open
park space in the southeastern portion of the Civic Auditorium Special Use District, the
concept was amended in 2005 to substitute a sports field at that location.
On June 14, 2016, Council adopted the Capital Improvement Program Budget for Fiscal
year 2016-17 (Attachment A), in which $200,000 was identified for design of the field for
the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field Project.
On October 25, 2016, staff presented a quarterly update on the project at a Council
study session (Attachment B). Among other project tasks, staff was directed to initiate a
discussion with the California Coastal Commission (CCC) regarding the temporary
sports field project and its removal of approximately 695 spaces from the surface
parking lot. Staff met with CCC staff, who confirmed that a parking study analyzing the
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issues described in this report would be necessary in order for them to consider the
CDP when it comes forward.
On February 28, 2017, staff delivered an update to Council (Attachment C) on progress
and processes involved in the sports field project, including the discussion with the
CCC. Staff provided information on the impact of removing the existing surface parking
lot that could be definitively addressed through a parking study.
On June 27, 2017, following completion of the site analysis and conceptual design study
by RJM, staff presented an economic study, design feasibility analysis and two concept
design options for a Multipurpose Sports Field at the Civic Center (Attachment D).
Following public testimony and discussion, Council directed staff to advance plans for a
field with no added parking. The direction also included authorizing the expenditure of
funds required to conduct a parking study to evaluate parking supply and demand that
would provide decision-makers with options for ensuring that the Civic Center area will
serve all users after the removal of approximately 695 parking spaces.
On September 26, 2017, the Council modified its design contract with RJM in the
amount of $94,198 for an amended agreement not to exceed $170,138, and staff
provided a schedule for project development that culminated in completion of the
parking study and amendment of the Civic Center Specific Plan in fall 2018 (Attachment
E). Before the application may be submitted for CCC approval, the CCSP must be
amended and all City planning entitlements must be obtained. The Five-Year Capital
Improvement Program allocated $7 million for the multi-purpose sports field project.
Discussion
An inter-departmental team including Community & Cultural Services, Planning &
Community Development, and Public Works has been coordinating to implement this
project based on Council’s June 27, 2017 direction to develop a Multipurpose Sports
Field in the Civic Center without replacement of most of the existing surface parking
spaces. Discussions have been held with major users, including the Courthouse and
City agencies. Staff has also met with Coastal Commission staff, to get their input on
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developing a comprehensive parking study scope of work that would provide the
appropriate analysis for their CDP review.
All this takes place within the context of Santa Monica’s long-standing forward thinking
on parking policy. As one of the pioneers in Southern California of a “park once”
strategy that used public investment to promote shared parking solutions, Santa Monica
continues to be a leader in promoting sustainable parking solutions that maximize public
value, minimize underutilized parking resources and support a range of safe, convenient
and affordable mobility options for residents, workers and visitors. The decision by the
City Council not to construct a new underground parking structure (in partnership with
the School District) at this location recognized that costly long-term parking investments
are unlikely to provide cost-effective parking solutions, particularly given the anticipated
advent of autonomous vehicles and increased public investment in regional transit.
The RFP outlined a two-part study scope for this project. Part I considers the demands
of various users of the Civic Center Parking Facility, strategies to manage supply and
reduce demand, and potential locations that may absorb the parking demand within the
area between Pico Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, including both sides of 4th Street.
Part I will produce alternative use and operational scenarios that are tested for potential
effectiveness resulting in a set of recommendations for parking resource management.
Part II of the study will analyze the availability of the City’s network of beach lots to
serve beach visitors, along with other means of access such as transit options and the
bicycle network, in order to determine whether construction of the field and activation of
the Civic Auditorium will impact coastal visitor access. In this part of the study, the
consultant will build on the recommendations for implementing operational measures to
manage Civic Center parking resources for local uses to add the perspective of
continued coastal visitor access. The budget also provides for the consultants’
participation in stakeholder outreach and City meetings.
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Consultant Selection
On October 10, 2017, the City issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a parking study
to support development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field. The proposals
were due by October 30, 2017. The RFP was posted on the City’s on-line bidding site,
Planet Bids, and notices were advertised in the Santa Monica Daily Press on October
12 and 13, 2017, in accordance with City Charter and Municipal Code provisions. The
RFP was also posted on the International Parking Institute’s website on October 18,
2017. 1,481 vendors were notified and 89 vendors downloaded the RFP. Staff
received only one proposal, from Walker Parking Consultants/Engineers Inc. (“Walker”).
A selection panel consisting of staff from Planning & Community Development, (City
Planning, Mobility, Traffic Engineering & Parking) and CCS Administration reviewed the
proposal and then interviewed the Walker team on November 6.
Walker’s proposal was evaluated based on the selection criteria: experience/technical
competence, approach/understanding of the project scope, ability to meet the work plan
within the compressed project schedule, cost of services, and team stability. Based on
these criteria and criteria in SMMC 2.24.073, staff recommends awarding this contract
to Walker as the best-qualified firm. The study will include the two phases described
above and will be completed at a total not-to-exceed cost of $136,305.
Walker is particularly well suited to conduct this study given the project team’s
experience conducting similar studies in other cities that explored best use of parking
resources to create walkable urban centers that meet parking needs while encouraging
multi-modal access. In addition, they have recently conducted parking and access
studies for several other Southern California coastal cities to support CDP applications
to the Coastal Commission. The Walker team has extensive familiarity with the City’s
parking and mobility policy direction, having prepared past assessments for the City
regarding managing the public parking supply in order to ensure continual access for
the highest priority users.
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Next Steps
Once Walker has been given a notice to proceed, the team will work closely with staff
on an expedited timeline to complete their work. It is anticipated that the first public
document (Best Practices and Recommendations Memo) will be released in May 2018
and that the Coastal Access Analysis will be released by July 2018. The project
deliverables schedule coincides with the schedule that was presented to Council on
September 26, 2017.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
The professional services agreement (PSA) to be awarded to Walker Consultants is for
an amount not to exceed $136,305. Funds are available in the FY 2017-18 budget in
the Planning & Community Development Department. The agreement will be charged to
account 01266.555060. Future year funding is contingent on Council budget approval.
Prepared By: Elizabeth Bar-El AICP, Senior Planner
Approved
Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. June 14, 2016 Council Staff Report
B. October 25, 2016 Council Staff Report
C. February 28, 2017 Council Staff Report
D. June 27, 2017 Council Staff Report
E. September 26, 2017 Council Staff Report
F. 2017 Walker Consultants Oaks Initiative
G. Written Communications
H. Powerpoint Presentation
Walker Parking Consultants/Engineers Inc
1
Vernice Hankins
From:zinajosephs@aol.com
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 9:57 AM
To:zinajosephs@aol.com; Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony
Vazquez; Gleam Davis; Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Cc:zinajosephs@aol.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 agenda item 3M -- OPPOSE
In a message dated 11/28/2017 9:51:30 AM Pacific Standard Time, zinajosephs@aol.com writes:
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Zina Josephs
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field
and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for
the Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to
work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should
133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit
THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved
since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t
required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF
specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission
purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the
same parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building
(CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove
City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
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BACKGROUND:
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval
and the Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even
though the Sports Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center,
the City leap-frogged SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City,
RAND, and SMC) and the CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND
eliminated its own on-site parking, by submitting them to the Coastal Commission and
asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot where the Sports Field
was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports
Field to the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true.
First of all, the Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet
the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking
study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin
McKeown, the Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that
demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be
accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t
require a study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where
350 parking spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in
the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on
existing data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by
City staff giving up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be
sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now,
with the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the
ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no
longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if
any issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the
entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff
already took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their
plans and decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB
wasn't necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC
Lab School, for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and
took up more spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither
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required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking
was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and
the City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more
commercial development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer
questions despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for
the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the
Sports Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all
across the country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on
the National Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is
required for submission to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018
and a year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense
given the CSB approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific
Plan before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has
said numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration,
so there is no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for
the amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to
be shifted south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and
should have included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t
want to draw attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission
and said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to
undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really
not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3
million had actually been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks
later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and
continues to be at risk.
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Vernice Hankins
From:Ann Hoover <annkbowman@yahoo.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:14 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Pam OConnor; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Terry O’Day; Tony Vazquez; Ted Winterer
Cc:Jaleh MIRHASHEMI; Ruth Fragoso; president@samohipptsa.org; Joan Krenik; Maryanne
LaGuardia; Kurt Schwengel; Lori Brown; Deborah Cohen; albin@global.t-bird.edu; Albin
Gielicz; Alan Toy 2; John Cyrus Smith
Subject:Council Meeting 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the
Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Ann Bowman and Jaleh Mirhashemi
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We second the letter from Zina Josephs and are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking
Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal
Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
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BACKGROUND:
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
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Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Wendy Dembo <dembo@sprynet.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:33 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Subject:Re: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the
Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Dear City Council,
I feel like I am a character in “Groundhog Day.” I feel
like I have written letters to you over and over about the
need for a field in the Civic Center.
I have gone to meeting after meeting. I have taken my
daughter 3 times to these proceedings and she is barely
10.
I recall at one meeting I mentioned how the City is all
about people not driving, and so I didn’t understand
why the loss of the parking spaces so close to the train
would be a concern. You as a City Council are
promoting less car usage. You have approved apartment
buildings to be built without parking. So why is there a
huge concern about the parking spaces that the field
would use. People, who come to use the field would
come perhaps by bike or train, or car and play and
leave. And then more people come to play and leave.
While the people, who work the new City Hall addition
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stay there all day. So they are the people, who need the
parking spaces.
The children, residents of Santa Monica and the
SAMOHI students really need another field. They need
it more than the City needs another hotel, or parking lot.
Additionally, all residents and visitors deserve a park at
Arizona btw 4th and 5th. A hotel will be a loss to us all,
except the Union and most Union members don’t live
in Santa Monica.
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking
Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead
submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for
approval IMMEDIATELY. We do not need an
expensive parking study of the entire downtown area to
know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if
any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park in other
locations or take public transportation. Why should
parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field
that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica
residents?
We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since
the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and
that isn’t required for submission. We also don’t want
to wait for the full design because the CIF
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specifications are sufficient for Coastal Commission
submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the
Coastal Commission now, using the same utilization
data submitted by the City Staff for the CSB and ECLS
and a promise to remove City Staff parking passes.
With great regret and disappointment,
Wendy Dembo
Santa Monica Resident and Voter
2021 California Ave.
SM, CA 90403
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Vernice Hankins
From:Wendy Dembo <projectspossible@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:38 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Subject:Re: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the
Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Hello,
I just turned 10 and I have already gone to 3 meetings about getting a field. Each time you, the City Council has said, it is ok.
You will get a field. But still I have to write to you. I even made signs to bring to a meeting, twice.
Please give us a field. You promised.
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field
to the Coastal Commission for approval IMMEDIATELY. We do not need an expensive parking study of the entire downtown
area to know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park in other locations
or take public transportation. Why should parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS
of Santa Monica residents?
We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and that isn’t required
for submission. We also don’t want to wait for the full design because the CIF specifications are sufficient for Coastal
Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same utilization data submitted by the
City Staff for the CSB and ECLS and a promise to remove City Staff parking passes.
Thanks,
Ruby Dembo
Santa Monica, resident and SMMUSD student
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Vernice Hankins
From:leisle bartley <leisle.bartley@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:47 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
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A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
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Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
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Vernice Hankins
From:Jamie Yarow <jamie@fununderthesun.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:55 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Jamie Yarow‐Marchis
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M ‐‐ Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports
Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the
Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move
forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public
transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority
over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal Commission
isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online,
are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization data
submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with
a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Jamie Yarow‐Marchis
Fun Under The Sun
p:(818)907‐8259
F:(818)907‐8221
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www.fununderthesun.com
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Vernice Hankins
From:Nikki Kolhoff <nhkolhoff@yahoo.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 11:57 AM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Cc:Nikki Kolhoff
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Dear City Council members:
I write to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the
Sports Field to the Coastal Commission immediately. We do not need a parking study of the entire downtown
area to know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City staff should give
up their parking passes. The parking study appears to be the next step in the City’s attempt to derail the Civic
Center Field.
The following reasons in support this position:
The City Did Not Comply with Coastal Commission Request to Submit a Parking Study for the SMC Early
Childhood Lab School or the City Services Building. City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field
to the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. As a reminder, the
Coastal Commission staff initially asked for a parking study for both the ECLS and CSB, but ultimately didn't
require it because the city refused to conduct the study and successfully argued that there was sufficient parking,
based on parking utilization information. There are dozens of other items that the Coastal Commission
requested and never received and/or ultimately did not require from the City for the ECLS and CSB. So we
would expect the City to push back on the field submission too and save the taxpayers money.
The City should have a very strong argument, given both Rick Cole’s statements and that of Executive Director
Jack Ainsworth, “The city of Santa Monica is one of the few places in Southern California where you have a
really robust transit system with the Expo Line and their own Big Blue Bus transit … the other point I’d like to
make is that the City of Santa Monica has more parking than any other coastal city in the state.”
Furthermore, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant
what the deficiencies are, if any. If the City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that
was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any
deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center lots, we would all know
very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the
entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
The Simple Solution: Take Away City Staff Parking. According to what Planning Director, David Martin, told
Kevin McKeown, the Coastal Commission says, “The City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the
parking needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact on
Coastal access.” The scope of the study is not defined, but it clearly doesn’t require a multi-phase study of the
entire downtown areas, complete with public outreach about future uses. As we saw in Chula Vista, not even
the Sports Field was a future use to be considered by the Commission, so it cannot be the case that any other
uses are required to be analyzed for the Field.
All the City needs to show for the Sports Field is that the 350 cars parking where the field is supposed to go can
park somewhere else (or no longer need to park) and there is no need to waste taxpayer money on staff time and
consultants for a study of the entire downtown Santa Monica. Based on the City’s own data and Coastal
Commission presentation, there are 217 spots left in the surface lot, so that leaves 133 cars to account for.
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An easy solution for those cars is that City staff working in the most expensive and greenest building on the
planet should simply surrender their parking passes and take alternative transportation. No parking at the Civic
Center allowed for City staff -- they should walk the walk. We don’t need an expensive parking study that
wastes taxpayer money and further delay to tell us that!
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence. The City has already taken away the
parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the 300-space
underground lot they planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. They are parking City staff in our
spaces. And the ECLS, for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking and took up
more spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study from the
Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed. We know there are other projects
competing for space like the Sears redevelopment and the City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field
must be approved before more commercial development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our
community. After 12+ years, we urge the City to submit the Sports Field now.
A Broad Study Is a Waste of Staff Time and Taxpayer Money. The proposed study goes well beyond what is
needed to meet the Coastal Commission’s request. Part I considers “the demands of various users of the Civic
Center Parking Facility, strategies to manage supply and reduce demand, and potential locations that may
absorb the parking demand within the area between Pico Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, including both
sides of 4th Street. Part I will produce alternative use and operational scenarios that are tested for potential
effectiveness resulting in a set of recommendations for parking resource management.” Why do we need all of
that when we can just take away 133 staff parking passes?
Part II of the study “will analyze the availability of the City’s network of beach lots to serve beach visitors,
along with other means of access such as transit options and the bicycle network, in order to determine whether
construction of the field and activation of the Civic Auditorium will impact coastal visitor access. In this part of
the study, the consultant will build on the recommendations for implementing operational measures to manage
Civic Center parking resources for local uses to add the perspective of continued coastal visitor access. The
budget also provides for the consultants’ participation in stakeholder outreach and City meetings.”
This scope is absolutely absurd for the displacement of 133 parking spots. We have already reviewed the needs
of the School District and Courthouse. They can easily be met with the spaces available in the parking
structure. It is City Staff needs that put the parking over capacity. So the City’s desire to conduct “public
outreach” meetings seems like an excuse to pit groups against the Field, when it is the CSB and ECLS that took
up parking needed for the Sports Field. Again, none of this is necessary if City Staff gets out of their cars and
behaves in the manner they are demanding of the rest of us.
This Is a No-Bid Contract to a Company Cozy with the City. Walker, the company being awarded the contract,
appears 107 times in a search of City documents since 1998, so they have been studying this all along. Do they
not have any relevant information already in their files? And can we expect them to be impartial?
No Contract Provided and Lack of Transparency. Why isn’t the contract attached to the agenda item? This is a
continuing pattern of obfuscation by the City staff with regard to the Sports Field. In addition to the lack of
notice of submission of the ECLS and CSB to the Coastal Commission and the City’s attempt to slip those
through as consent items in Cambria, the City continues to withhold critical documents. How can City Council
approve a contract it can’t even read?
Public Records Requests to the City Delayed or Denied. You need to know that we still have not received all of
the documents related to the October 13 Coastal Commission hearing that we requested from the City back in
September. Some of those we may start to get on November 30, but of course too late for this City Council
meeting. Regarding other items, the City staff members say they aren’t required to give them to us due to PRA
technicalities, but they won’t respond to requests for information outside the PRA framework. So we are left
with a staff (sitting on documents and data) that refuses to communicate that information to, or meet with, the
residents who pay for it. This is completely unacceptable.
Specifically, in preparation for this City Council meeting, we asked City Staff for a series of documents that
should already be publicly available, either on the City’s bidding website or Coastal webpage, but are not.
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These include the Sports Field RFQs, RFPs, the contract with contractor already hired for feasibility/design and
parking RFQ. It’s important to note that none of these were attached to the agendas for the meetings at which
they were approved either. We were told the City wanted to “track the requests” and that we must submit the
requests as PRAs. As a result, City staff is using all loopholes available under PRA rules to delay providing
these documents. We received another notice on 11/13/17 that the City would need 14 more days to locate these
items. Are we really supposed to believe that while City staff claims to be actively working hard on the Sports
Field for the 11/28/17 meeting that they don't know where copies of these critical file documents are?
The City doesn’t even want to hear from us because this has been placed on the agenda as a “consent item,”
which means they don’t think it’s important enough to discuss! This is appalling given the charade we just
went through with the Coastal Commission consent item process.
The Civic Center Specific Plan Amendment Is NOT Required for Submitting the Sports Field to the Coastal
Commission. We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the
CCSP, as we heard them state many times in Chula Vista. The CCSP Amendment simply is not required for
submission.
Final Construction Design for the Sports Field Is NOT Required for Submission to the Coastal Commission.
CIF specifications are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Failure to Fully Fund the Field in October 2017 Shows Bad Faith. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick
Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "With all due respect, the folks who have said that the city
is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is
really not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had
actually been funded, and City Council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to
only $7 million.
The New Timeline Shows Bad Faith. The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019 for the
design of the Sports Field). How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across
the country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National Federation of
State High School Associations website.
The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the CCSP. Any amendment should be known
already and not take a year. The reason for the amendment, as far as we can tell, is the that the SMC ECLS got
so big, that the field has to be shifted toward Pico. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and
should have included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but it seems that City staff didn’t want to draw
attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
ACTION: Please direct staff to submit the Civic Center Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the
same parking utilization data submitted by the City staff for the ECLS and City Services Building, along with a
promise to remove City Staff parking passes. There is no reason to treat the Sports Field project with less
urgency than the ECLS and City Services Building, given the Sports Field is the only project of the three that
the residents you represent have consistently asked you to build.
Thank you for your consideration.
Regards,
Nikki Kolhoff, Santa Monica Resident
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Vernice Hankins
From:Pietro Martini <tpcmartini@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:02 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day; fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
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A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
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Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Sincerely,
Pietro Martini
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Vernice Hankins
From:Steve Rogers <mooserogers@hotmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:05 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Steve Rogers (1123 Stanford St., Santa Monica 90403)
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
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The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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3
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
24 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Tom Bevan <doghead2@yahoo.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:14 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:CIVIC FIELD
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as
they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit
THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by
the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient
for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization data submitted by the
City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove
City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the Coastal Commission looks at
projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic
Center, the City leap-frogged SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the CSB,
each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by submitting them to the Coastal
Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission until this
parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and
CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the Coastal Commission says that the
City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be
accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a study of all downtown, circulation
patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available
in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing data and requiring that any spaces
needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be
sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant what the deficiencies are, if
any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal
Commission for the ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open-
ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already took away the parking spaces
reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build
under the CSB wasn't necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School, for mostly
non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more spaces. Both of these projects were rammed
through first so that neither required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being
removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The
Sports Field must be approved before more commercial development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017 Recreation and Parks Commission
meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new
timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports Field. How can this possibly be? It is
a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on
the National Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission to the Coastal
Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a year-long approval period of a year
(ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan before submitting to the Coastal
Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s
consideration, so there is no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the amendment, as far as we can tell, is that
the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in
2015 and should have included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention to how
huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics,
Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly
plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal issue." It turns
out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually been funded and council funded an additional $3.7
million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Sincerely,
Tom Bevan
Santa Monica resident of 15 years
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Sumita Khatod <skhatod@yahoo.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:21 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Sumita Khatod
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
27 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Courtney Kearns <caclark60@aol.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:24 PM
Subject:CC Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Courtney Kearns
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
As a resident of Santa Monica who has had kids go through the local school systems and
sports program. I am dismayed that a continued fight for the long promised, and much
needed sports field, is necessary. PLEASE listen to the voices of Santa Monica who have been
overwhelming clear about the need and desire for this field and help the community be what
it wants to be. Not what the developers want it to be.
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
28 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Tim Blaney <puppetguy59@verizon.net>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:31 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
Item 3-M 11/28/17
29 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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3
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
31 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Amy Woodson-Boulton <woodson.boulton@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:32 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:CIVIC FIELD; Luke
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Amy Woodson-Boulton and Luke Boulton
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and
the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff
parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
We truly cannot believe that there is this much controversy and delay over a SPORTS FIELD,
when Santa Monica touts itself as a city interesting in Wellbeing, Health, Education, and the
Environment. All of these issues are wrapped in this field: the wellbeing, education, and health of
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
our children; their access to space to play, becoming active young people who will walk and ride
bikes; and the use of space for something other than development for profit, showing the essence of
our civic responsibility: to steward our resources, including that precious commodity of land, to
benefit current and future generations.
PLEASE stop stalling on this field that SO MANY of us have to KEEP EMAILING ABOUT.
We're sorry to yell at you in all capitals -- but we do want to express our real frustration at this
process.
Yours truly,
Amy Woodson-Boulton (SAMOHI '90) and Luke Boulton, parents of Felix (Lincoln MS) and Leo
(Franklin ES)
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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3
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
Item 3-M 11/28/17
34 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
4
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
35 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Kevin Flick <kevinvflick@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:41 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Dear City Council:
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the
Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval IMMEDIATELY. We do not need an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area to know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park in other locations or take public transportation. Why should parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and that
isn’t required for submission. We also don’t want to wait for the full design because the CIF specifications are
sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the CSB and ECLS and a promise to remove City Staff parking passes.
Kevin Flick
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:amezzo@aol.com
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:43 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Agy & Sean Norris
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Dan Kolhoff <dkolhoff@hotmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:45 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field.
Instead DIRECT STAFF to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval
immediately.
1) The Study is an UNNECESSARY EXPENSE. A parking study of the entire downtown area is
not needed to move forward with the Sports Field.
2) The CITY STAFF CAN MITIGATE parking issues for the field by parking in other locations,
walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents
to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will
benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) MOVE NOW as there is NO NEED TO WAIT for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment
to be approved since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended
CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) CIF SPECIFICATIONS ARE SUFFICIENT for Coastal Commission submission and
AVAILABLE ONLINE. The full design of the Sports Field is not required for Coastal
Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
We have been waiting far too long for the CITY to move on this project.
Sincerely,
Dan Kolhoff
Resident of Santa Monica
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Vernice Hankins
From:Valeria <pookster_1720@yahoo.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:49 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Valeria Jaime
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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3
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Ann Maggio <annmaggio@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:53 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:CIVIC FIELD; Ann Maggio Thanawalla
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M
November 28, 2017
To: City Council From: The Thanawalla Family City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization
data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School
(ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Sincerely,
The
Thanawalla
Family
Wilmont
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Xiuqing Guo <xiuqing9999@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:55 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:CIVIC CENTER FIELD - UPDATE re: Parking Study Before City Council Tonight
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Xiuqing Guo
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Item 3-M 11/28/17
44 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
45 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
46 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:deeonn la <deeonn@hotmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:18 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam Davis;
Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Dear Council Members,
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the
Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval IMMEDIATELY. Frankly, as a Santa Monica resident and parent to two Santa Monica public school students, I do not understand why the City is so hell-bent on killing the Sports Field adjacent to SAMO High. For many parents, this is just another example of the City taking action which is against the interest of its residents, and it's beyond frustrating!
We do not need an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area to know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park in other locations or take public transportation. Why should parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents? We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and that isn’t required for submission. We also don’t want to wait for the full design because the CIF specifications are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct your staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission IMMEDIATELY, using the same
utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the CSB and ECLS, with a promise to remove City Staff parking as necessary to effectuate the approval of the Sports Field.
Sincerely,
DeAnne Ozaki (Santa Monica resident)
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Fitness Wellness <uscrecsports@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:20 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Field at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Space
To: City Council
From: Justine Gilman
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
Item 3-M 11/28/17
48 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
Item 3-M 11/28/17
49 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly
--
Fitness and Wellness
Department of Recreational Sports
Lyon University Center
1026 W. 34th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2500
Phone: (213) 740-5127
Fax: (213) 740-9739
uscrecsports@gmail.com
"The mission of Recreational Sports is to provide quality recreational programs and services that enhance
student, faculty, and staff knowledge and opportunities for participation in activities that promote healthy
lifestyles, positive human relations, and leadership skills."
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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Vernice Hankins
From:Rob Levin <rob@arocd.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:21 PM
To:ccouncil@smgov.net; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Tony Vazquez; Gleam
Davis; Sue Himmelrich; Pam OConnor; Terry O’Day; Ted Winterer
Subject:Re: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M - Parking Study for Development of the
Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Fields
Dear City Council:
As a parent, resident and community member, I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for
the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval
IMMEDIATELY. We do not need an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area to know that the
Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park in other locations or take
public transportation. Why should parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit
THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and
that isn’t required for submission. We also don’t want to wait for the full design because the CIF specifications
are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same utilization data
submitted by the City Staff for the CSB and ECLS and a promise to remove City Staff parking passes.
Thank you
Rob Levin
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Justine Gilman <justinegilman2006@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:22 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:Fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
To: City Council
From: Justine Gilman
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
Item 3-M 11/28/17
53 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
Item 3-M 11/28/17
54 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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4
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly
Item 3-M 11/28/17
56 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Justine C Gilman <jgilman@usc.edu>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:25 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Civic Center Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Justine Gilman
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M ‐‐ Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports
Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the
Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move
forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public
transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority
over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal Commission
isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online,
are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization data
submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with
a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the Coastal Commission
looks at projects on a first‐come, first‐served basis. Even though the Sports Field is the simplest and cheapest project
remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap‐frogged SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City,
RAND, and SMC) and the CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on‐site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot
where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required ‐ City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission
until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the Coastal Commission asked for a parking study
for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the Coastal Commission
says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses that currently use the
Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a study of all
downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces for the Sports Field will come
from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed ‐ counting spaces based on existing data and requiring
that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving up their right to park in the Civic Center
surface lot ‐ would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant what the
deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that was approved just last
month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City
staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That
is a lot cheaper and faster than an open‐ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First‐Come First‐Served, So Timing Is of the Essence ‐ The City staff already took away the parking
spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the 300‐space underground garage they
planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the
SMC Lab School, for mostly non‐resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on‐site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study from the Coastal
Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the City’s own Local
Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial development has a chance to interfere with
the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field ‐ At the October 19, 2017 Recreation and Parks
Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions despite authoring many staff reports. The
City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
‐‐ The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports Field. How can this
possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country, and the required specifications for a CIF
field are publicly available on the National Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is
required for submission to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
‐‐ The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a year‐long approval period
of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval process took only 5 months.
‐‐ The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan before submitting to the
Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the
Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the amendment, as far as
we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City
would have known this in 2015 and should have included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff
didn’t want to draw attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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3
‐‐ October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting ‐‐ City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an attempt to discredit
his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that
the city is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is
really not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This
means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Justine Gilman, Ed.D.
Senior Director, USC Recreational Sports
Advisor, USC Song Girls and Spirit Leaders
USC Lyon Center
1026 W. 34th St
(213)740‐8120 office
(213)740‐9739 fax
www.usc.edu/recsports
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Council Mailbox
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:27 PM
To:councilmtgitems
Subject:FW: CC Sports Field
From: Courtney Kearns [mailto:caclark60@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:24 PM
Subject: CC Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Courtney Kearns RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
As a resident of Santa Monica who has had kids go through the local school
systems and sports program. I am dismayed that a continued fight for the long
promised, and much needed sports field, is necessary. PLEASE listen to the voices
of Santa Monica who have been overwhelming clear about the need and desire for
this field and help the community be what it wants to be. Not what the developers
want it to be.
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why
should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved
since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF
specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the
same parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove
City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Council Mailbox
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:28 PM
To:councilmtgitems
Subject:FW: Civic Center Field
From: Yolanda Lewis [mailto:ylewis123@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2017 12:16 PM
To: Council Mailbox <Council.Mailbox@SMGOV.NET>
Subject: Civic Center Field
To: City Council From: Yolanda Lewis RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members: We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward. 2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or
take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents? 3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field. 4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because of the CIF specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Thank you.
--
Yolanda Lewis
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Thane Roberts <robertsthane@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:44 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Thane Roberts AIA
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Thank you for your consideration,
Thane Roberts AIA
Ocean Park Resident
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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2
Item 3-M 11/28/17
64 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Costas Philippou <cosph@hotmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:44 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead
submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to
move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public
transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take
priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal
Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports
Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are
posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking
utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab
School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the Coastal
Commission looks at projects on a first‐come, first‐served basis. Even though the Sports Field is the simplest
and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap‐frogged SMC’s ECLS (private daycare
primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the CSB, each of which had expanded its square
footage AND eliminated its own on‐site parking, by submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking
that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
65 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
A Parking Study Is NOT Required ‐ City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to the Coastal
Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the Coastal Commission
asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited parking
utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the Coastal
Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses
that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a study of all
downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces for the Sports Field
will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed ‐ counting spaces based on existing data and
requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving up their right to
park in the Civic Center surface lot ‐ would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant what the
deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that was
approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any
deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know
very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open‐ended parking study of the
entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First‐Come First‐Served, So Timing Is of the Essence ‐ The City staff already took away the
parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the 300‐space
underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff
in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School, for mostly non‐resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on‐
site parking, and took up more spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither
required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being
removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the City’s own
Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial development has a chance to
interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field ‐ At the October 19, 2017 Recreation and
Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions despite authoring many staff
reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
‐‐ The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports Field. How can
this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country, and the required
specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National Federation of State High School Associations
website. Only a site design is required for submission to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
66 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
‐‐ The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a year‐long
approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval process took
only 5 months.
‐‐ The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan before submitting
to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said numerous times that the CCSP is
irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the amendment,
as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted south toward Pico
Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have included it in the CCSP amendments
at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
‐‐ October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting ‐‐ City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an attempt
to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "With all due respect the folks
who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set
aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he
spoke, only $3.3 million had actually been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later,
bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Costas
Item 3-M 11/28/17
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1
Vernice Hankins
From:Varvara Althouse <valthouse@me.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:48 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Best,
Varvara Althouse
Sent from iCloud
Item 3-M 11/28/17
68 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Roberto Tinti <roberto.tinti@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 1:51 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Roberto Tinti, 606 Marine ST, Santa Monica
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
Item 3-M 11/28/17
69 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
70 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
71 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Alison Regan <agregan@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 2:05 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:CIVIC FIELD
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Thank you,
Alison Regan
LAOUT (Los Angeles Organization of Ultimate Teams)
Item 3-M 11/28/17
72 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Chris Rowe <bebuckle@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 2:21 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day; fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Please stop DELAYING Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
Somehow you can find $150M+ to build some ultra-fancy city hall annex that nobody needs and
will require tons of parking in the Civic Center area, yet if it's a field for our kids (including
thousands who go to school right there at the high school) you're suddenly all "Hang on, what
about the cars?! Let's not make any rash decisions!"
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
The community needs this field badly; it has been promised for many years; and it needs to move
forward.
I met Ted Winterer last fall when he visited my street in Sunset Park prior to the election to council
(and subsequent elevation to mayor). He seemed very down to earth and community-oriented as do
many members of the Council when they speak to community members. Yet when push comes to
shove on the Civid Field or the airport, the losers always seem to be the families of the Community
who just want decent schools, less air & noise pollution, and more open space for their kids.
Move this field along and quit looking for more ways to waste time and money on side projects that don't do
squat for the people who voted for you.
And while we're at it, please stop wasting millions fighting in court for at-large districts, which are likely the
root cause of your dependence on big money at the expense of local families.
Thanks for your consideration,
Chris Rowe
2442 22nd St.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
73 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:rickeinc@gmail.com on behalf of Rick Edwards <re@rickedwardsinc.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 2:32 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017
To: City Council
From: Rick Edwards
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
I am a Santa Monica resident since May, 1981. I have never bugged the local government about
anything until now.
Please either (a) vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit
the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately or (b) provide the citizens
strong contrary reasons.
What is follows is a form letter, but, based on the information I have (which I respect may not be
complete) I agree with its sentiments.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
Item 3-M 11/28/17
74 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
Respectfully,
Rick Edwards
416 Adelaide Dr.
Santa Monica, Ca. 90402
-----------------------------------
This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity addressed and may contain information that is
privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. This communication may be
protected by the attorney/client and/or work product privileges. The privileges are not waived by virtue of this
communication having been sent by e-mail. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, employee
or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or
copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If this communication has been received in error, please
notify us immediately by responding to this e-mail or telephone.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
75 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:Vikki Smyth <vsmyth@usc.edu>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 2:50 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
To: City Council
From: Vikki and Robert Smyth, Santa Monica
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center
Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
Item 3-M 11/28/17
76 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
77 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
We sincerely hope you understand that there is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire
downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward.
Sincerely,
Vikki Smyth
310 779 8666
Item 3-M 11/28/17
78 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
1
Vernice Hankins
From:art is the answer <shineshuge@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 2:55 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:RE line: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of
the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
STOP WITH THE "STUDIES" JUST STOP THE WASTE AND TIME DRAGGING- COME
THROUGH FOR THE RESIDENTS INSTEAD OF THE STAFF AND DEVELOPERS - I could
not have said this better- so I am copying and pasting... we the residents have had it with the waste
of money and level of dishonesty in our City. Time it stops.
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work,
or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa
Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications,
which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same
parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the
SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from
the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports
Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged
Item 3-M 11/28/17
79 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
2
SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the
CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic
Center surface lot where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to
the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the
Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately
prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact
on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking
spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the
applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with
the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and
CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to
park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot
cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with
“public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already
took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and
decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't
necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School,
for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more
spaces. Both of these projects were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study
from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017
Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions
despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
Item 3-M 11/28/17
80 of 93 Item 3-M 11/28/17
3
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the
country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National
Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission
to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a
year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB
approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan
before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said
numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is
no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have
included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention
to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports
Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and
said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the
building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal
issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually
been funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only
$7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Not written by me but supported in full by
Danielle Charney
424-238-5470
36 Year Resident STILL being jacked around by this City
STOP
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Vernice Hankins
From:hawkded@aol.com
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 3:10 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
To: City Council From: Robert Todd Hawkins
RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports
Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why
should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved
since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission
purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building
(CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
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The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval
and the Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports Field is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center,
the City leap-frogged SMC’s ECLS (private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the CSB, each of which had expanded its square footage AND
eliminated its own on-site parking, by submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot where the Sports
Field was supposed to go. A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports
Field to the Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and
CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin
McKeown, the Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that
demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t
require a study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in
the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on
existing data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be
sufficient. Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell
the applicant what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for
the ECLS and CSB, and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any
issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already took away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed
their plans and decided the 300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. Instead, they are parking City staff in Sports Field
spaces. And the SMC Lab School, for mostly non-resident kids, tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more spaces. Both of these projects were rammed
through first so that neither required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach access parking was being removed.
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We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more
commercial development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19,
2017 Recreation and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new
timeline for the Sports Field. -- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the
Sports Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country, and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on
the National Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission to the Coastal Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018
and a year-long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan before submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission
has said numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is no need to wait to submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field
has to be shifted south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have included it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the
staff didn’t want to draw attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal
Commission and said, "With all due respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8
million to build, is really not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually been funded and council funded an
additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
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Vernice Hankins
From:Vitaly V. Kresin <kresin@usc.edu>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 3:21 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the
Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
Please vote no on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field which is on the Council
agenda. It is unfathomable that an item -- which has been discussed ad nauseam; which the City
Council has promised repeatedly to prioritize; and which no one denies will bring immense benefit
to the youth of this city -- is once again being shoved into an unnecessary union with unrelated
matters (here, the entire downtown's parking study) and thereby pushed back by another number of
years. Please stop erecting unnecessary administrative diversions and maneuvers and instead
submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
Instead of another massive and expensive study, you owe the thousands of Santa Monica kids and
their parents only three things:(1) A plain-language (not legalese) public explanation of why you
have repeatedly failed to live up to your own promised timescales; (2) An apology for the above;
and (3) Prompt submission of the project for approval.
Thank you for your attention.
Vitaly Kresin
Santa Monica
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Vernice Hankins
From:Charlene K Nakamura <charnaka2002@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 3:47 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:CIVIC FIELD
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and
instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval immediately.
Please explain to me why City Staff and the City Council continue to stall the construction of a sports
field on the Civic property that was promised to residents back in 2005? This outrageously
expensive "Parking" study is yet another stall tactic. Instead of wasting my tax dollars on this study
that will no doubt further delay the construction of a temporary field (yes, that's right, all we have so
far from the 2005 promise is a temporary field), save our money and move the
construction of this field forward. All actions thus far honestly lead me to believe you all don't want
to do this. I'm sure you are tired of receiving all of these emails. I'm tired of sending these to
you. Be bold, be brave and be honest with us.
1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order for the
Sports Field to move forward.
2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or
take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking
spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica
residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the
Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP isn’t required for
submission of the Sports Field.
4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which
are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same parking
utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early
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Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove City staff parking from the Civic Center
surface parking lot.
BACKGROUND (from the Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force):
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the
Coastal Commission looks at projects on a first-come, first-served basis. Even though the Sports Field
is the simplest and cheapest project remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap-frogged SMC’s ECLS
(private daycare primarily for employees of the City, RAND, and SMC) and the CSB, each of which had
expanded its square footage AND eliminated its own on-site parking, by submitting them to the
Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by the Civic Center surface lot where
the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study Is NOT Required - City staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to the
Coastal Commission until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First of all, the Coastal
Commission asked for a parking study for the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by
delivering limited parking utilization data and no parking study.
Secondly, according to what Planning Director David Martin apparently told Kevin McKeown, the
Coastal Commission says that the City needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking
needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be accommodated without having an impact on
Coastal access.
The scope of that study is not defined, but it would be very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a
study of all downtown, circulation patterns, and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces
for the Sports Field will come from when 217 are already available in the lot.
We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed - counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City staff giving
up their right to park in the Civic Center surface lot - would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant
what the deficiencies are, if any. If City staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data
that was approved just last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and CSB, and with the
proposal that any deficiency be made up by City staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic
Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain. That is a lot cheaper and faster than
an open-ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with “public outreach.”
Coastal Approval Is First-Come First-Served, So Timing Is of the Essence - The City staff already took
away the parking spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the
300-space underground garage they planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. Instead, they
are parking City staff in Sports Field spaces. And the SMC Lab School, for mostly non-resident kids,
tripled in size, eliminated its on-site parking, and took up more spaces. Both of these projects were
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3
rammed through first so that neither required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to
determine if beach access parking was being removed.
We know there are other projects competing for space, such as the Sears redevelopment and the
City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial
development has a chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Procedural Delays for the Sports Field - At the October 19, 2017 Recreation
and Parks Commission meeting, the City sent a staffer who couldn't answer questions despite
authoring many staff reports. The City also provided a new timeline for the Sports Field.
-- The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports
Field. How can this possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country,
and the required specifications for a CIF field are publicly available on the National Federation of State
High School Associations website. Only a site design is required for submission to the Coastal
Commission, not full construction plans.
-- The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a year-
long approval period of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval
process took only 5 months.
-- The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan before
submitting to the Coastal Commission. However, the Coastal Commission has said numerous times
that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s consideration, so there is no need to wait to
submit.
Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not take a year. The reason for the
amendment, as far as we can tell, is that the ECLS got so big that the Sports Field has to be shifted
south toward Pico Blvd. Of course, the City would have known this in 2015 and should have included
it in the CCSP amendments at that time, but perhaps the staff didn’t want to draw attention to how
huge the ECLS had grown.
-- October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting -- City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an
attempt to discredit his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "With all due
respect the folks who have said that the city is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the
sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really not a Coastal issue." It turns out that
was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually been funded and council
funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the
field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
Thank you,
Charlene Nakamura
cell: 310-990-9624
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Vernice Hankins
From:I J Rosenstein <ijr203@verizon.net>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 3:58 PM
To:councilmtgitems
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:Parking Study for Development of the Civic Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council Council Members: I believe the need for a multipurpose sports field is obvious. I hope you will move forward and avoid delays with expensive studies that are not necessary. The field plan should be submitted to Coastal
very promptly. Thank you, Ilse Rosenstein
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Vernice Hankins
From:Tilda Shin <tildashin@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 4:13 PM
To:Council Mailbox; councilmtgitems; Kevin McKeown Fwd; Sue Himmelrich; Gleam Davis;
Pam OConnor; Ted Winterer; Tony Vazquez; Terry O’Day
Cc:fieldatcivic@gmail.com
Subject:City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
November 28, 2017 To: City Council
From: Tilda Shin RE: City Council 11/28/17 Agenda Item 3M -- Parking Study for Development of the Civic
Center Multipurpose Sports Field
Dear Mayor Winterer and City Council members:
We are writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission for approval
immediately. 1) There is no need for an expensive parking study of the entire downtown area in order
for the Sports Field to move forward. 2) If any mitigation is needed, City staff can park in other locations, walk or ride bicycles to work, or take public transportation, just as they constantly urge residents to do. Why should 133 parking spaces for City staff take priority over a sports field that will benefit
THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
3) There's no need to wait for the Civic Center Specific Plan amendment to be approved since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP, therefore an amended CCSP
isn’t required for submission of the Sports Field. 4) There's no need to wait for the full design of the Sports Field because the CIF specifications, which are posted online, are sufficient for Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the
same parking utilization data submitted by the City Staff for the City Services Building (CSB) and the SMC Early Childhood Lab School (ECLS), along with a promise to remove
City staff parking from the Civic Center surface parking lot. Thanks for your time,
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Tilda
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Vernice Hankins
From:lmarreola@roadrunner.com
Sent:Tuesday, November 28, 2017 5:06 PM
To:councilmtgitems
Cc:Sue Himmelrich
Subject:11-28-17 City Council Meeting- Agenda Item 3M-Parking Studyfor Civic Ctr. Sports
Field
Dear City Council:
I am writing to ask that you vote NO on the Parking Study for the Civic Center Sports Field and instead submit the Sports
Field to the Coastal Commission for approval IMMEDIATELY. We do not need an expensive parking study of the entire
downtown area to know that the Sports Field should move forward and, if any mitigation is needed, City Staff can park
in other locations or take public transportation. Why should parking for City Staff take priority over a sports field that
will benefit THOUSANDS of Santa Monica residents?
We don’t want to wait for the CCSP amendment since the Coastal Commission isn’t bound by the CCSP and that isn’t
required for submission. We also don’t want to wait for the full design because the CIF specifications are sufficient for
Coastal Commission submission purposes.
Please direct staff to submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission now, using the same utilization data submitted
by the City Staff for the CSB and ECLS and a promise to remove City Staff parking passes.
BACKGROUND:
The key to a project moving forward in the Coastal Zone is Coastal Commission approval and the Coastal Commission
looks at projects on a first‐come, first‐served basis. Even though the Sports Field is the simplest and cheapest project
remaining in the Civic Center, the City leap‐frogged its pet projects, SMC’s ECLS (private day care for staff of City, Rand
and SMC employees) and the $84 million CSB, each of which had expanded and eliminated its own on‐site parking, by
submitting them to the Coastal Commission and asking that their parking needs be met by parking in the surface lot
where the Sports Field was supposed to go.
A Parking Study is NOT Required ‐ City Staff is claiming that it cannot submit the Sports Field to the Coastal Commission
until this parking study is done, but that is simply not true. First, the Coastal Commission asked for a parking study for
each of the ECLS and CSB, yet the City ultimately prevailed by delivering limited utilization data and no parking study.
Second, according to what Planning Director, David Martin, told Kevin McKeown, the Coastal Commission says “the City
needs to provide a study that demonstrates that the parking needs of the uses that currently use the Civic lot can be
accommodated without having an impact on Coastal access.”
The scope of the study is not defined, but it is very narrow and certainly doesn’t require a study of all downtown,
circulation patterns and all coastal parking to show where 350 parking spaces will come from when 217 are already
available in the lot. We have no reason to think the alternative we have proposed ‐ counting spaces based on existing
data and requiring that any spaces needed for the field (133) be accommodated by City Staff giving up their right to park
in the Civic lot ‐ would not be sufficient.
Third, the Coastal Commission is required to respond to an application in 30 days to tell the applicant what the
deficiencies are, if any. If the City Staff were to submit the Sports Field now, with the same data that was approved just
last month by the Coastal Commission for the ECLS and CSB and with the proposal that any deficiency be made up by
City Staff no longer being allowed to park in the Civic Center Lots, we would all know very quickly if any issues remain.
That is a lot cheaper and faster than an open‐ended parking study of the entire downtown, complete with “public
outreach.”
Coastal Approval is First‐Come First‐Served So Timing is of the Essence ‐ The City has already taken away the parking
spaces reserved for the Sports Field when they changed their plans and decided the 300‐space underground lot they
planned to build under the CSB wasn't necessary. They are parking City Staff in our spaces. And the Lab School, for
mostly non‐resident kids, tripled in size eliminated its on‐site parking and took up more spaces. Both of these projects
were rammed through first so that neither required a parking study from the Coastal Commission to determine if beach
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2
access parking was being removed. We know there are other projects competing for space like the Sears redevelopment
and the City’s own Local Coastal Plan. The Sports Field must be approved before more commercial development has a
chance to interfere with the needs of our community.
Other Updates Relating to Field Procedural Delays
‐ October 19, 2017 Recreation and Parks Commission meeting ‐ The City sent a staffer to the meeting who couldn't
answer questions despite authoring many staff reports. The City also provided new timeline for the Sports Field.
‐ The new timeline shows almost 2 years (completed in June 2019) for the design of the Sports Field. How can this
possibly be? It is a rectangle of turf with lights, replicated all across the country, and the required specifications for a CIF
field are publicly available on the National Federation of State High School Associations website. Only a site design is
required for submission and not full construction plans.
‐ The new timeline shows no submission to the Coastal Commission until October 2018 and a year‐long approval period
of a year (ending October 2019). This makes no sense given the CSB approval process took only 5 months.
‐ The new timeline also shows almost another year to amend the CCSP before submitting to the Coastal Commission.
However, the Coastal Commission has said numerous times that the CCSP is irrelevant to the Coastal Commission’s
consideration so there is no need to wait to submit. Furthermore, any amendment should be known already and not
take a year. The reason for the amendment, as far as we can tell, is the ECLS got so big, that the field has to be shifted
toward Pico. Of course, the City would have know this in 2015 and should have included it in the CCSP amendments at
that time, but they didn’t want to draw attention to how huge the ECLS had grown.
‐ October 24, 2017 City Council Meeting ‐ City Council still did not fully fund the Sports Field. In an attempt to discredit
his critics, Rick Cole stood before the Coastal Commission and said, "with all due respect the folks who have said that the
city is secretly plotting to undermine the building of the sports field that we have set aside $8 million to build, is really
not a Coastal issue." It turns out that was not an accurate statement. As he spoke, only $3.3 million had actually been
funded and council funded an additional $3.7 million 2 weeks later, bringing the total to only $7 million. This means the
field is not fully funded and continues to be at risk.
‐ Santa Monica Parks & Recreation Task Force coun
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REFERENCE –
AGREEMENT NO.
10592 (CCS)