Available land is a rare and, therefore, valuable commodity in Santa Monica. So city officials are pleased with the opportunities they now have after purchasing about 11 acres, owned for decades by a prominent think tank, that lie adjacent to Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, City Hall and Palisades Park. "It's an incredibly strategic area," said Andy Agle, Santa Monica's deputy director of planning and community development. The city could eventually develop parks, affordable housing and office buildings on the property, which is only a block from the beach. Downtown Santa Monica is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean and contains a number of Southern California's most prominent tourist attractions, including the Santa Monica Pier, the Third Street Promenade, and the Santa Monica Place shopping mall. The Rand property separates the Promenade and the shopping mall (to the north) from City Hall and the civic Auditorium (to the south) and has therefore served for decades as a barrier to connecting those two areas. The city's redevelopment agency purchased the property this spring from Rand Corporation for $53 million. An extensive, community-based planning process for the site will likely begin this fall. The purchase of the land between Ocean Avenue and Main Street, just north of the Civic Auditorium, places a key chunk of the Civic Center district in public hands. That's important because a specific plan for the area, which the city adopted in 1993, was never fully executed. That plan assumed that Rand's property would remain in private hands but would get developed with a new Rand headquarters, affordable housing, and public open space. However, Rand officials said the city's plan for the site was not economically feasible for the company. "The city had a fairly elaborate vision of what could be done on this land," Rand spokeswoman Iao Katagiri told the Los Angeles Times. "The economics proved to be impossible for us to meet." Santa Monica has long been ruled by social activists who have not restricted growth in an extreme way, but, rather, have imposed heavy social and community requirements, such as child-care facilities, affordable housing, and transit fees, on new development projects. So Rand was receptive when the city offered to purchase the property. The nonprofit research company is one of the city's largest private employers, with about 1,000 workers. Currently, the site contains a number of Rand office buildings, some of which are dilapidated and boarded up, and a large surface parking lot. Rand has submitted an application for a five-story, 300,000-square-foot office building with an underground parking lot, Agle said. Essentially, Rand will consolidate from 15 acres down to about 3.5 acres. A motel on the site is scheduled to be torn down and replaced this summer with a four-story office building developed by Maguire Partners, one of Southern California's most prominent commercial developers, which is also based in Santa Monica. The Rand entitlement process will likely wrap up this fall, although Coastal Commission approval, which can be sticky, is needed for the project. After Rand builds its new headquarters, it will demolish the current structures, opening the site for the city's redevelopment project. At about the time Rand is scheduled to receive city approval for its new building this fall, the city will begin a public planning process, Agle said. Although the City Council has not yet established the precise structure of the process, he anticipates it will take 12 months to 18 months to scope the project, receive public comment and write a plan. The City of Santa Monica is known for emphasizing the "public" portion of the public planning process, so it will not move quickly. Once a draft plan is complete, the environmental review will commence. "It's a very significant opportunity for Santa Monica," Agle said of the newly acquired land. "It's going to be a real focus on community attention because it's such a strategic location and it presents and opportunity to address some of the critical concerns that the community has raised." Santa Monica badly needs both affordable housing and open space, and the newly acquired property could provide both, Agle said. The City Council talks of diverse population and has hoped to see affordable homes developed on the Rand site for years, as evidenced by the 1993 Civic Center plan. Real estate prices make affordable housing development difficult in Santa Monica, a city whose tough rent control laws have been partially overridden by recent state legislation (see Legal Digest, page 9). In fact, a recent study by the city found that a new state law that lets apartment owners raise rents on vacant units to market rates cost the city 2,000 units affordable to low-income and very low-income households. Rental rates have jumped an average of 41% to 75% for the vacant units. City housing officials project that Santa Monica will lose 3,800 units, or 15%, that were once affordable to families earning 80% of median income. All of these factors put momentum behind the idea of affordable housing development on the newly acquired property. The open space concept is appealing because the property is cater-cornered to heavily used Palisades Park, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The city considers the bluff-top park one of its prime assets, and the park could conceivably be extended into at least a portion of the newly purchased property. Acquiring the Rand site also allows the city to tie together the pier, the park, the Civic Auditorium, City Hall, a courthouse and Santa Monica's lively downtown. The upcoming planning process offers the opportunity to rethink the relationships of all the land uses in the area, Agle said. Contacts: Andy Agle, Santa Monica planning and community development department, (310) 458-2275. Santa Monica website: www.ci.santa-monica.ca.us