The Los Angeles City Planning Commission hosted a hearing for a proposed development at 2111-2139 Pacific Ave. on Oct. 28. It is a four-story apartment building with 100 units, 11 of which are affordable units. The plans have 84 parking spaces and 1,800 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. No formal action was taken at the hearing.
Jonathan Lonner, a representative of the developer, RKD 2111 Pacific, said that the 11 affordable housing units, making up 16% of the density of the building, allowed the project to qualify for three bonus incentives. Density bonuses allow special relaxing of regulations based on the amount of affordable housing included by the project, including a menu of incentives.
One of the incentives the project qualified for is an off menu-density bonus. Typically, an on-menu density bonus will allow a project an 11-foot extension in height, Lonner said.
However, because of Community Planning Implementation Overlay design requirements, or CPIO, the project is asking for 15.5-foot increase. In addition, it is asking for an increase in floor area and a reduction in parking stalls from 121 to 84.
The Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council opposed the project at its Oct. 11 meeting. Robin Rudisill, chair of the council’s Planning, Land Use and Transportation Committee, reiterated her council’s objection to the project at the hearing.
“The density bonus projects allow for on-menu and off-menu bonuses as an incentive for providing affordable housing,” Rudisill said. “This project is an outrageous and egregious use of the density bonus regulations and the San Pedro community plan. The applicant is proposing, and the [city] council’s office is supporting development bonuses way beyond what the regs allow.”
Rudisill said that the developer only qualified for a 35% density bonus for the number of units, but it asked for 46%. For parking, it asked for a 45% reduction from what the density bonus regulations allow, a reduction of 41 spaces.
“The density bonus regulations are not meant to be used as a blank check for the applicant to request, and the [city] council office to support, any amount of bonuses,” Rudisill said.
In addition, Rudisill pointed out that the developer is trying to violate density bonus regulations by requesting an off-menu floor to area ratio bonus, or FAR, of 3.26 to 1. The normally permitted FAR is 1.51 to 1, meaning the developer is requesting a bonus of 117%.
Rudisill said the developer is not allowed an unlimited bonus amount as an off-menu request, as the density bonus law states that off-menu requests are for development standards not on the menu of permitted incentives. FAR is on the menu, as is height, which the developer requested a bonus for as well.
“The applicant justifies these outrageous bonuses by simply stating that they need them in order to build 11 units of affordable housing,” Rudisill said. “That’s outrageous, where does it end? 117% FAR bonus is unacceptable, would you approve 150% FAR bonus if they said they needed it?”
Lonner said that he understands the community’s concern that the project is not compliant with the community plan, CPIO, and redevelopment plan. However, he argued that density bonus legislation and other ordinances at the city level allow the project to conform to the said local plans without considering the bonuses.
“The state has made it very clear that a project is compliant with local plans if the elements that extend beyond those local plans — height specifically — are related to those density bonus requests,” Lonner said. “The height, in this case, is related to our density bonus request. And therefore, we are compliant with the CPIO, the community plan, and the redevelopment plan, because our height is granted through state legislation.”
Lonner said this project and the project at 1309-1331 S. Pacific Ave., which he is also representing, should not be considered together.
Lonner said that because the projects were more than 500 feet from each other and not within a clear line of sight from each other, there would be no impact in regard to noise. Lonner also said that particulates do drift, but not over this big of a distance, meaning they would not impact each other’s air quality. In addition, there are seven lots of existing buildings between them, which provide obstacles to the noise and the particles.
Noel Gould, a member of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, said that the project did not have enough parking spaces.
“It is woefully under-parked,” Gould said. “There is already totally inadequate parking in the area, if you just drive around, even for 10, 15, 20 minutes at night, trying to find a parking space over about a 10 block area, you’d be lucky if you find one.”
John Smith, a 16-year resident of San Pedro, said the developer’s expectation of people using “alternative” transportation, i.e. using the bus instead of a car, was unrealistic.
“People in San Pedro typically work at a variety of places, industrial settings, so forth, where there are no bus lines that are convenient,” Smith said. “People need their cars. Even people who may take mass transportation to work, if they’re rich enough to be able to afford this apartment house, they’ll probably also have a car for other uses.”
Smith also pointed out that while this project and the project at 1309-1331 S. Pacific Ave. were seven blocks apart, this project is four stories tall, and none of the buildings within those seven blocks reach that high. The tallest buildings are only three stories.
“This is a very tall building and it’s butting up right against single-story houses on 22nd Street,” Smith said.
Elise Swanson, president and CEO of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber approved of the project after careful consideration.
“We understand the need for housing in Los Angeles and are advocates for increased housing production in our community to support our workforce,” Swanson said.
Swanson said the chamber worked with the developer on the design of the project and its parking committee worked with the developer on the design of the building.
“We spent much time with the developer with our parking subcommittee on developing innovative ways to address transportation in our community,” Swanson said.
Even though the developer worked with the chamber, it did not work with the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council. San Pedro resident Fran Siegel said that council made recommendations back in November 2019, but the developer did not address any of them.
“Why waste taxpayer money, time and lawyers, instead of sitting down with us to make modifications that actually conform to San Pedro’s community plan?” Siegel said.
Siegel pointed out that the project is about 90% market-rate housing, even though there are already hundreds of market-rate apartments sitting empty in San Pedro.
“Is this another [Jose] Huizar virus, as a pay-to-play crowdsource investment scheme that uses the community as a dumping ground with a growing infection of cheap, out-of-scale cookie-cutter blocks that no one can even afford to live in?” Siegel said.
The project’s next hearing is tentatively set for Dec. 17.