North County's Las Lomas Project: A Status Report

Dan Palmer: Las Lomas represents a truly big idea; it is designed to be the region's first smart growth community and the northern gateway to the San Fernando Valley. Built on the human scale of a small town, it is intended to be an antidote to urban sprawl, with jobs, schools, parks, museums, shops, restaurants and community activities all within walking distance of each other, reducing the need for car trips to the rest of the Valley and region.

Imagine a home in which a working mom can add three quality hours per day to her day because all of her destinations -- school, work, shopping, recreational and cultural activities -- are all nearby. Imagine a village that is close enough to Los Angeles' urban core that America's most innovative and advanced companies will want to create offices, research facilities and corporate headquarters there, with employment opportunities to match. This community is Las Lomas, and it was designed with a commitment to the ideals identified in Vision 2020, the Livable Communities report produced by the Economic Alliance.

Vision 2020 supports an expanded centers concept, encouraging community- oriented town centers, which feature complimentary mixed uses where shopping, dining, entertainment, and recreation services are all found within walking distance. Locally owned businesses add a sense of place and showcase the character of the community. Town centers have ready access to parking and public transportation and an up-to-date system of streets and highways. They are aesthetically pleasing, pedestrian-friendly, well-maintained spaces that include distinctive architecture, public art and elements of local culture." That paragraph is your writing, but it is also our vision. It could have been written about Las Lomas.

When Las Lomas' Metrolink station is completed, other major job centers such as Sylmar and downtown Los Angeles will be just minutes away, all without adding additional cars to the freeway. Las Lomas will offer a diversity of residential options to meet the needs of all types of families and income levels, including affordable housing. Approximately 5,800 new homes, a mix of commercial office retail and community service facilities offering a range of employment opportunities, including 2.3 million square feet of office space, a research and development space, 225,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail shops, restaurants and a 300- room hotel.. All the necessary services and amenities will be within walking distance for residents, including an elementary school and a high school, child care facilities, a library, police and fire stations and other services. Las Lomas will feature multiple transportation linkages including pedestrian, vehicular, light rail, and heavy rail for regional transportation.

The benefits for the region are considerable; homes for more than 15,000 people currently locked out of the housing market, the creation of 22,800 jobs, including 9,000 permanent jobs, and the generation of approximately $22 million in annual tax revenue for the city of Los Angeles. That means $10 million in net revenues - enough to pay for 100 new police officers. The multiplier effect on the Los Angeles region's economy is estimated to be $1.3 billion.

Las Lomas is a growth model for the region's future – increasing housing availability and reducing community travel time on a large scale. It will not, however, abandon a strong commitment to environmentalism. Las Lomas will be designed to incorporate sustainable building practices, recycled construction materials, and designs that incorporate "greener" configurations to reduce energy consumption.

No endangered plants or animals currently exist on the site. We're proposing to replant thousands of trees throughout the area, and we're already working closely with leading environmental organizations such as the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Traffic and transportation are probably the issues of greatest concern to the immediate neighborhoods in the region. Rapid growth has pushed housing further and further away from the metropolitan area to the new, affordable but distant suburban homes and has caused more gridlock on the 5 and 405 freeways. But Las Lomas will have no significant traffic impact, because it is created in such way to encourage residents to stay within Las Lomas. However, to the extent that there is traffic on the site, we plan to spend $30 million in off-site mitigation and improvements. This is significant for an area that has not seen any public or private spending of any magnitude in more than 40 years. To mitigate congestion, we propose to add 6,000 linear feet of new four-lane roads, twelve new traffic signal or signal upgrades, new turn lanes at congested intersections, nine freeway ramp improvements, three new ramps connecting Interstate 5 as well as roads straight through it, and a new four-lane road to connect parts of Sepulveda Boulevard to the site.

We have designed this community to make the most of the site's natural beauty. At Las Lomas, outdoor activities can be woven into the daily lives of residents, and this is exactly what experts are saying must be done to combat the sedentary lifestyles that urban sprawl and three-hour daily commutes have fostered.

To move forward, we need to demonstrate both to the city of Los Angeles and to LAFCO why this project benefits the Valley, the city and the region. It is better for all three if Las Lomas is connected to Los Angeles. We need to overcome the understandable concerns of the two adjacent Los Angeles City Council members, who must respond to constituents' fears about more development. The City is completing an EIR that we believe identifies and discloses all the relevant information on all the issues of greatest concern.

Have your plans been reviewed by Caltrans?

The Caltrans review doesn't begin until the draft EIR is reviewed. We have had informal consultations with Caltrans officials to ensure that we will meet all their published standards and objectives, and at present, LADOT is completing its review. When they are satisfied, it will be circulated to other government agencies including Caltrans.

Is the Southern California Association of Governments involved?

SCAG is generally aware of it [the project]. The traffic numbers that SCAG has produced are a source of some controversy for us. We have taken the very conservative approach and assumed that the population of Las Lomas will be in addition to the population growth already forecasted, but organized in a more benign way, rather than sprawling into the Antelope Valley. We are redoing our traffic study to include SCAG's numbers now.

Where are you in terms of the annexation?

Santa Clarita has attempted to incorporate part of the development, but no hearings have yet taken place. We are hoping that hearings will be held in 2005 and that Los Angeles could finish its process by the end of 2005 or the first quarter of 2006. The process at LAFCO is really focused on which jurisdiction the project will reside within.

How much parking are you planning to provide so that people from Santa Clarita can park and use the new Metrolink station?

It is in our interest to provide sufficient parking because we believe that having a Metrolink station with sufficient parking will attract people to the mixed-use retail sites.

Could you characterize some of the current physical conditions that are going to be improved by virtue of your plan?

I would generally describe the property as overlooked. It is a casualty of a rush to construct major infrastructure to service the larger metropolitan area to the south. Two freeways were jammed through this area as well as an enormous landfill. There are high-tension wires that crisscross the property, underground gas lines, abandoned oil wells and aqueducts. There is a train tunnel lying underneath the mountain. There are smatterings of what I think are refuse and low level industrial uses. There is a paintball game on a portion of it that makes it look like a battle zone, and there is also a junkyard. One thing you'll see as you come up to the property is how this is really become a dumping ground for the larger region. The types of nearby business and activities are the types of things you put where nobody cares.

This property has been overlooked, and I think that it doesn't serve man or nature very well in its current condition. Basically, it's at a crossroads between major ecosystems. One is the well-established human habitation pattern that runs up and down the 5 Freeway from Mexico City to Vancouver. The other is the Santa Susanna - San Gabriel transverse mountain range, which is one of the largest ecosystems in the region. We think we have a real opportunity to try to strike a harmonious balance between the two.

Can you elaborate on how bringing 15,000 people into the area will benefit the wildlife as you have suggested?

There is no connectivity for wildlife today. The biologists and resource agencies have indicated that the connectivity is severed because of the two large freeways and even less permeable L.A. Aqueduct. The way to restore connectivity between the genetic pool on the east side to the genetic pool on the west side is to create permeability in those three barriers that meet certain noise and light requirements. We will create large, unimpeded corridors where there are obstructions such as the Aqueduct and the freeways, and we will build structures that enable urban crossings at a separated grade from road lines. We will engage in different kinds of plantings to provide food sources for the small prey animals that will then encourage some of the larger carnivores to also use the corridors. The budget for that project is about three million dollars, and the nature of the wildlife corridor was worked out in consultation with the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy.

If the land surrounding the project was sold and used for construction how long will it take to finish the project?

If we could complete the City of Los Angeles' review process in 2005 and early 2006, construction could begin in 2007, and we are forecasting a 15- to 20-year build-out to complete the project.

You're going to use Sunshine Canyon for your refuse, correct? Or will you be self-sustaining in that regard as well?

Although we are nearby, we do not necessarily plan to rely on the Sunshine Canyon landfill. The sewage treatment would be handled onsite with a packaged plant and a tertiary level of treatment. The upside of onsite treatment of sewage is an onsite source of irrigation quality water, which we can utilize not only to maintain the vegetation within the community itself, but also use as a new source of water available to the greater region. Our site will also feature three vigorous recycling programs. We have adopted the idea of sustainable building practices to reduce the amount of solid waste associated with the construction itself by recycling materials.

What will be done to lessen the risk of natural disasters at this site, a site that historically has been vulnerable to wildfire and earthquakes?

There are at least two or three significant attributes to the development that address wildfires. There will be an onsite fire station, reservoirs to increase water flow in the area, and fuel modification, which is an effort to replace certain plant species with less flammable plant species. As for earthquakes, there is only one fault that traverses this property that is active enough to preclude any sort of building activity to take place on it. Any building will have to be set back from it, and this setback can serve double duty as one of the wildlife corridors.

Could you clarify the laid miles of freeway, the number of off-ramps and number of bridges you are going to build? It seems like your cost figures are grossly inaccurate.

We have a set of physical improvements, which we are obligated to build no matter how much they cost. Now if we estimate $30 million, I think that is attributed to the efficiency of the private sector. But we are in the midst of discussions with LADOT as to what the final mitigations and costs should be.

How do you plan to enforce sustainable practices and green building on this project? Are you going to be doing the development? How is that going to be controlled?

There will be a multi-level enforcement mechanism. First, there is a contract between the development contractors and the city itself. The contract guarantees that a certain set of land uses and design criteria will be enforced as code within the project area. That is a very extensive list of physical requirements; materials, different uses and sustainable practices that are hardwired into a specific code for any construction to occur on the property. Then in terms of the actual administration and enforcement there are three levels. First, the master developer has the responsibility to make sure that prior to any plans being submitted by any participating builders or contractors within the project area, they are evaluated for consistency with applicable ordinances and codes, etc. Once the set of plans passes that muster, they then go to a separate independent review by the city's planning department. If the conformity is questioned, that proposal then goes before the entire Los Angeles City Council. We have seen applications with great merit that do not strictly conform because they are innovating new and better ideas, and these will be considered.

Are you going to do all the construction before you integrate aspects of the project or are you implementing the project over so many years and doing the construction continuously to keep up with what is happening?

The traffic mitigations will be implemented when the actual measuring devices on the pavement indicate that we have hit certain traffic loads. Unfortunately, it will be continuous, but it will be done incrementally in advance, in anticipation of the onsite traffic generation and based on real time observations.

What are you going to do if Los Angeles does not give you the zoning and densities that you need to pencil this project out?

I have not really spent a lot of time on that hypothesis. I believe that the leadership in Los Angeles has a deep and profound understanding of the problems we face as a broader society with regards to burgeoning population growth and the inability of the current built environment to deal with this. For example, I could have submitted a much more conventional project to the County of Los Angeles based upon an existing general plan and zoning requirements, and we could build 247 large single- family homes at this site. . We've turned our back on that because we believe that a more forward-looking type of proposal serves the greater good. We think we are headed in the right direction, and we anticipate that in the fullness of time, the wisdom of moving this direction will be recognized and will overcome more parochial considerations.