The (lack of) Planning Department will continue to be the concubine of developers as long as they ignore the new community plans as they have the old ones. Sylmar has a major LACK of retail and commercial, and one reason is that the “Protected Commercial Zone” specified in the details of the current Sylmar Community Plan has been ignored in favor of the Department’s standard procedure of granting “friendly downgrades” in zoning. In other words, anyone is allowed to build residential in a commercial zone. So our last 40 acres of commercial zone along Foothill Blvd and the 210 freeway are now home to 92 condos with 200+ more approved and on the way.
In another instance, a corner residential joke of a project was easily approved when the developer applied for a corner retail project, and built 17 detached condos instead. The residential project would never have been allowed without major mods if it had been applied for in a residential zone. It seems the major campaign-contributors are the developers, so it’s reeeeally hard to get the City Council and the Mayor’s Planning Commission to consider the community or anything resembling “planning”.

But we keep on fighting, and we ARE making progress. Will it be enough to prevent LA from becoming 400 square miles of Manhattan-style (nominally) transit-oriented density-bonused gridlock?

That remains to be seen, and it doesn’t look good.

I’ll have more hope when I see the meeting in good faith, of City Council Planning and Land-Use Committee, the MTA, DWP, the city, county & state Recreation & Parks, County Board of Sups, LA Rivers Org, the Transit Coalition, the bike-path folks and the Rim-of-the-Valley Horse Trails team.

Now THAT could be the beginning of real planning.

The City of L.A.’s planning department has NOBODY who specializes in transportation planning!

Is it a surprise, then, that their planning efforts continue to fall flat? The largest public land holding in L.A. is controlled by the interests of a professional class of traffic engineers.

The planning department needs some staff that understand how roadway design and meaurement can profoundly affect an area for the better (or worse).

The planning documents they pump out (and the Measurement and Evaluation section of the Tranposrtation Element of the General Plan) need to pay attention to the measures of economic life and livability. Right now, the community plans call for more car throughput, parking, and speed at the expense of just about everything else.

I hope that the Valley’s council reps can get it together to strip the stranglehold the LADOT has on roadway planning.