As the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) grant program neared its October 31 public comment deadline, the program was showing a more definite sense of institutional purpose, focused on promoting dense transit-oriented urban streetscapes. Would-be grant applicants may be disappointed if they expect AHSC to focus on maximizing affordable housing construction or promoting healthier living in small inland towns. Housing is a major statutory goal of the AHSC program, and the proposed grant criteria do allow some leeway for use in less dense areas. But this is not the comprehensive housing construction and rehabilitation program that housing and economic justice advocates would like to see the state enact. The Strategic Growth Council's presentation materials released in late October for the current, final round of public workshops on the program were full of reminders about AHSC's narrow focus. The materials said the program is able to make only a few grants -- 13 to 23 in the main part of the program for the coming year. The materials emphasized the goal of transit-oriented density in a look at "the big picture vision" through before-and-after renderings of urban street makeovers. These showed how a street could be made more prosperous and welcoming to visitors through denser, less car-oriented development. "Before" images depicted broad, rough-edged commuter arteries, with sparsely placed businesses, unevenly set back from the sidewalk by parking lots, often using old-fashioned or awkwardly hand-lettered signage. "After" images created a cozier, more prosperous look, using a palette of streetcars, bike lanes, trees, pedestrians, and upscale storefronts in better-kept, taller mixed-use buildings that snuggled right up to their sidewalks. In these images, the likes of International Boulevard in Oakland and El Camino Real in Santa Clara began to look more like the likes of Barcelona. The presentation called attention to a proposed requirement that appears in text surrounding Table 4 of the Draft Guidelines released in September . It would provide that housing developments supported by the program must have a transit station within a "walkable route" of half a mile. They would need to contain at least 100 units in a metropolitan area or 50 units elsewhere. Minimum net density for all-housing buildings would range from 20 to 60 units per acre by type of area; for mixed-use projects, minimum floor-to-area ratios would range up the same scale from 1.5 to 3.0. On two major outstanding questions -- identification of "disadvantaged communities" and definition of a role for regional government entities -- the new materials added little beyond the early-October staff report and SGC hearing discussion . On the belated CalEPA designation of "disadvantaged" census tracts that must be "benefited" by half of AHSC funds, the new materials said the choices "will be available in the next few weeks." The SGC Web site now provides a dedicated Web page for the AHSC program and a separate page for its separately administered farmland fragment, the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC). Workshops seeking to explain and receive comment on the near-final design for the main AHSC program were being held October 23 through 28 , with plans to webcast the October 28 meeting in Sacramento. Workshops on the SALC program were set for October 24 in Oroville, October 29 in Bakersfield, and October 30 in Watsonville . Comments on both program designs are due October 31, respectively to http://sgc.ca.gov/s_ahscwebcommentform.php and ahsc_ag@sgc.ca.gov. The ARB cap-and-trade proceeds page displays 149 comments on the "disadvantaged communities" choice process. Comments submitted to the SGC have not yet been posted online. The late-October AHSC materials said a final draft of the guidelines would be posted December 1 in preparation for the December 11 meeting where the Strategic Growth Council will be asked to approve the whole plan.

The Coastal Commission's October docket in Newport Beach served up a fair slice of Southern California celebrity-involved madness and possibly more items than usual of old business of the it's-never-over variety. The Commission's most widely reported act of the month was to postpone consideration of an appeal on an unpopular proposal by entities linked to U2 guitarist David Evans, known as "The Edge," to build five large new houses in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Malibu Times and LA Times reported the postponement was for lack of adequate notice to stakeholders and the Commission would likely take up the matter again in January. The paper quoted Frank Angel, attorney for the Sweetwater Mesa Homeowners' Association, as calling the continuance "a huge game changer" because the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan (LCP) was to take effect the Friday after the October Commission meeting. (On that approval see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3559; http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474.) In a commentary ahead of the meeting , LA Times columnist Steve Lopez had questioned how Evans managed to get the hearing scheduled just before that effective date. In the staff report , summaries of public comments included celebrity relationship gossip and a mention of a Web site that formerly discussed the project, www.leavesinthewind.com. As of 2011 that site explained the plan as it then stood in some detail, promoting it in terms of environmental responsibility and high-concept design. Rejected in its original form that year, the project has since been reduced and redesigned for a less visible group of sites . The Laguna Beach Independent reported that Mark Christy, proponent of a renovation and rebuilding project at "The Ranch" in Aliso Canyon, brought three busloads of supporters to speak in public comment sessions at the Coastal Commission. It said speakers in Christy's favor included the Mayor Pro Tem and two City Council members. The Newport Beach Independent reported more than 60 supporters of The Ranch appeared, outnumbering participants in the monthly anti-fracking protest. The Commission has had rocky relations with Christy for some time. This month, as reported further at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3595 and in the Coastline Pilot , the Commission determined The Ranch had done unpermitted work on its outdoor landscape, including creation of a 7000-square-foot dance floor. Additional disputes concern whether Christy's proposed additions to the site will cause too much environmental harm, and whether the work he has already done on the mid-century resort buildings constitutes renovation or new construction. And this month the Coastline Pilot published a letter by Christy on an additional issue: the lack of a public trail on the site. He wrote that it wouldn't work for safety reasons because the resort includes a golf course. The Commission granted approval, with conditions , for a plan allowing the City of Los Angeles to sell the last seven house lots it owns on the rim of Potrero Canyon in Pacific Palisades. The plan comes with approvals for filling and grading by the city to stabilize the canyon rim. Proceeds will go into a special restoration fund for the park below the lots. The staff report recounts that the city bought 22 residential lots along the canyon in 1991 following litigation over landslides. Since then the city has been conducting restoration work in the area and selling house lots a few at a time to pay for each next stage of the project. This month's approval allows the city to sell the last seven lots without keeping an earlier promise that it would first complete a new park and riparian "habitat installation." Per the Los Angeles Times ' online archives the original landslide was in 1978 and coverage of city efforts to fix the problem dates back to at least 1985 and 1989 . Caltrans won confirmation of a 2012 approval to move about three miles of Highway 1 inland in San Luis Obispo County near Piedras Blancas. Shoreline erosion and bicycle safety were among the major concerns. The plan also brings the road farther away from a beach that is massively popular with elephant seals, hence decreasing the risk of sofa-sized marine mammals entering the roadway. On reconsideration, the Commission granted permission to the City of Los Angeles to install a seasonal ice rink on Venice Beach . The Commission had denied the permit initially in September because of objections to the city's prior handling of a zipline attraction and maintenance of nearby public bathrooms. San Diego got approval for its LCP amendment to license and regulate food trucks at parks and beaches . The Daily Pilot reported the Commission approved 23 "townhomes" for the former site of a Christian Science church in Newport Beach. The paper wrote, "The site along the 3300 block of Via Lido isn't far from where the former Newport Beach City Hall is to be replaced by a boutique hotel. Officials hope the move will inject life into the area." The Commission was still planning a workshop for December to consider methods of preserving public access to the cheap seaside family vacation. A cheerful mission at first glance, but conflicts over mitigation costs to developers to preserve low-cost access were less than cheerful through the summer, especially in July (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3528). The Commission's meeting agenda, annotated with outcomes, is at http://coastal.ca.gov/meetings/mtg-mm14-10.html. News of the Commission during the rest of October was a mix of grants, enforcement actions and appeals. Napster and Facebook billionaire Sean Parker and his wife Alexandra Lenas got the label of "philanthropists" from a Monterey Herald report on their steps to comply with a Coastal Commission settlement. The settlement is in compensation for environmental damage caused at Big Sur by elaborate preparations for the couple's wedding in June 2013. Parker and Lenas agreed to sprinkle $1.2 million among eight environmental and education nonprofits on the Central Coast as part of a $2.5 million settlement payment. Parker also agreed to create a mobile app for the Commission to help coastal visitors to find beach access points. In another resolution of long-running old business, the Commission announced its approval of a "final plan to restore public access" to the Ontario Ridge trail in San Luis Obispo County.  More details from the Tribune here . Commission staff contributed to an Assembly hearing September 25 , primarily on dangers of desalination to sea life. The city of San Clemente got a $90,000 planning grant to work toward finishing its Local Coastal Program (LCP) certification. Newport Beach is applying for a similar grant. More jurisdictions' pending planning grant applications are posted online , awaiting decisions during the next couple of months. KIEM-TV reported the city of Eureka got a $250,000 grant to prepare a risk analysis on sea level rise. The Orange County Register reported Long Beach officials were moving toward approval of the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, a pricey remodel of the existing Belmont Plaza Pool for use in diving competitions. Columnist Bob Keisser objected that the new pool would be less ambitious than the old one in the scale of competition events it could host; he was among those calling for a bigger effort to potentially host 2020 Olympic trials. The local Daily Breeze reported the city of Rancho Palos Verdes was working on an amendment to its LCP to comply with a Coastal Commission determination that the current 70-foot flagpole at the Trump National Golf Club violated the existing LCP. San Diego's Friends of the Children's Pool filed suit over the Coastal Commission's decision to reserve the Children's Pool beach for seals during pupping season. Beach access advocates were additionally calling on the city to open sluiceways in the seawall to clean the sand. Sadly for an already-contested resource, the pool was reportedly part of an area closed for safety due to an October 14 sewage spill. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Ross Eric Gibson of the La Bahia Coalition filed an appeal with the Coastal Commission against city approval of a plan to partly replace, partly renovate the historic La Bahia Hotel. The project would convert it from a 44-unit apartment building into a 165-room hotel, conference center and day spa.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) won two major takings law victories in late October. Clients championed by the property rights organization defeated a San Francisco law on compensation to tenants evicted under the Ellis Act, and managed to undo a coastal easement requirement that the court said was an unfair permit condition. San Francisco city attorney to appeal San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced he would appeal a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer that struck down the city's new ordinance on compensation for tenants evicted under the Ellis Act. From its effective date in June until Breyer blocked it effective October 24, landlords who took an occupied unit off the rental market were required to pay their evicted tenants two years' worth of difference between the lost rent rate and the market-rate rent for a comparable unit in the city. The ruling in Levin v. City and County of San Francisco accepted arguments by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) that the ordinance violated constitutional property rights. The PLF victory press release said the lead plaintiffs in the matter would have had to pay $118,000 to the tenant of the duplex where they live in order to rent their extra unit to friends or family. The SF Chronicle 's Bob Egelko has details of the ruling . He quotes Breyer as calling the compensation amount "an enormous payout untethered in both nature and amount to the social harm actually caused by the property owner's action." A copy of the ruling is available on PLF's Web site . Coastal property owners vindicated On October 23, the Second Appellate District reversed itself on rehearing in Bowman v. California Coastal Commission . The court had agreed as of April 15 to depublish its initial ruling in March and rehear the matter. The new ruling is a victory for the PLF's clients, Sandra Bowman and her sisters, who inherited a large San Luis Obispo County property, partly along the coastline, from their father, Walton Emmick. The sisters have been disputing Coastal Commission efforts to enforce a public access easement as a condition for a coastal development permit (CDP) to improve the dilapidated house and barn on a part of the property a mile inland. As discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3452, the court's earlier ruling backed the Coastal Commission in finding that collateral estoppel barred the sisters from repudiating a public access easement that the county initially required of them as a condition for a CDP. The March decision gave a somewhat confused account of the facts, saying Emmick did renovation work in anticipation of that first CDP although it was issued after his death -- hence that he and his successors accepted the CDP's burdens along with its benefits. Accordingly the March court agreed with the Coastal Commission that the sisters could not take advantage of the county's decision to grant their application for a second CDP without the easement. The new opinion accepted the PLF's version of the facts: that Emmick did renovation work on the property only under county permits that were exempt from the CDP requirement because they did not "change the use or dimensions of the structure." It stated Emmick "did not make the repairs for which he sought authorization" under the initial CDP, hence that neither he nor his successors accepted any benefit under it. However, the court's new opinion was not based solely on this fresh understanding of the facts. It also said the easement exaction was unfair: "There is no rational nexus, no less rough proportionality, between the work on a private residence a mile from the coast and a lateral public access easement." The court found it immaterial whether the requirement was the Commission's or the county's fault. Regardless, the court said collateral estoppel doctrine calls for equitable results. Because of both the reinterpreted fact pattern and the lack of nexus between the renovations and the easement, the court found the equity requirement was not met. In a statement in April, the court had requested letter briefing on the standard of review. It said "the parties appear to agree" that the March ruling misapplied the substantial evidence rule to the administrative mandate question, in that it chose to consider only evidence supporting the prevailing party rather than "all relevant evidence even if it detracts from the administrative decision," as called for in La Costa Beach Homeowners' Assn. v. Cal. Coastal Comm. (2002) 101 Cal.App.4th 804. The court asked the parties whether the Commission should be treated as the sole authority to determine credibility of evidence, or, if not, how the La Costa case should apply. In the opinion that followed, the court looked to a phrase in La Costa saying "Courts may reverse an agency's decision only if, based on the evidence before the agency, a reasonable person could not reach the conclusion reached by the agency." It then based the decision on its own interpretation of the facts. The new, currently effective opinion is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B243015A.PDF.

News Item: the Los Angeles City Council has rescinded a long-standing ordinance requiring all high-rise buildings in the downtown area to have rooftop helipads . When the ordinance was in effect, all downtown buildings were flat-headed in design to accommodate the helipads. The result was a skyline of monotonous uniformity and "architectural mediocrity," according to the New York Times . There is only one way to provide an adequate commentary on this situation: A Greek tragedy. SCENE: LATE NIGHT IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. A GREEK CHORUS, MADE UP ENTIRELY OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS, CHANTS IN UNISON. CHORUS OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Oh, misfortune! Our reign has come to a sorry end. Gone is our skyline, unique in all the world, of uniform flatness. Gone, alas, are the days when ‘copters swarmed us The way butterflies swarm poppy fields. No more to hear The sweet sound of chop-chop-chop-chubba-chubba-chop-chop. Goodbye, copters! Goodbye cops! Farewell, first responders in MedEvacs! For the Chief Fireman has said, in his annoying nasal voice,    ‘Go not to rooftops any more, oh thou office workers of LA! People in emergencies should stay put, and wait for help.'  What kind of poppycock is that? Does this mean That choppers are never more to land on our flat, bald heads, Each with a target for helicopters marked "X" in the center,  Seen by none but birds, planes, God and Google Earth? No more will high-rise buildings look like us, the flat-headed tribe. The next generation won't have that special look -- that is to say, The look of a bunch of wooden boards at the hardware store, Standing upright, that nobody has bought. Enter THE TRANSAMERICA TOWER, a famous pointy-headed building from San Francisco. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Oh, go ahead and moan, you inane band of overgrown cigar boxes. Snivel, if you want. You're through. The future belongs to sharper shapes. Just as skyscrapers with syringe-like tops were the toast of Manhattan In the Golden Age, so once again pin-head buildings will come to rule Your snoozefest of a skyline. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Insult added to injury! You pyramidal monstrosity, come to torment us Just when we're feeling totally like we can't deal. TRANSAMERICA TOWER (being really obnoxious) But deal you must. This is progress, enlightenment, artistic freedom! Face it, anvil-brains, you don't stack up when compared with Tokyo Or all those Chinese cities with their pointy tower things. Boring, boring! FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You can laugh and scorn, you irresponsible pinhead! You, who never shouldered any social responsibility. Our very heads spoke of preparedness. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Yes, and for that reason, you get no standout buildings by the Starchitects, Those favorites of Zeus and Hera, who got them jobs with the other gods. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: What bosh! Know ye not that we are of the International Style? Just as the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe, and its wife, the green-skinned Lever House by Skidmore Owings Merrill, The legendary New York pair that gave birth to all the office buildings that came after them, were both flat of brow? What say you of that, you much-derided pinhead! TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Don't remind me of my poor reception when first built! Though I stand by the Bay, I was by designed by an Angeleno, The hard-partying Bill Pereira. Now I am a symbol of San Francisco! Take that, you derivative clump of banalities! ENTER the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, a recent building in Baku, Azerbajian by Zaha Hadid. This exquisite building, widely portrayed in published photos during recent months, is elliptically curved in profile. HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURE CENTRE (with a slightly husky voice): Hey boys, stop fighting. You're not just wrong, you're stuck in the past. Look at my beauty and be struck speechless as Buster Keaton. Flat, pointed, who cares? It's irrelevant. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You look like a woman in a head-scarf Standing in a strong breeze. I think we are in love. TRANSAMERICA BUILDING (to HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER) You call us irrelevant? You're from Azerbajian, for crying out loud. The client is a dictator who builds what he wants, regardless of cost. Plus, you're a cultural center, not an office building, so you don't count. And you were designed by Zaha Hadid. Her office buildings On the whole, have flat tops! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: All true. I'm just making a point, you pecan-brained dinosaurs. The future can be flat, pointed or free-form like me. The point is that LA can enjoy some variety, and catch up With the skyline of a second-tier Chinese city, maybe, if it tries. As for Tokyo or Dubai, however … oh, just give up now.  CHORUS OF FLAT-TOP BUILDINGS (highly offended): You decadent hussy! Irrational product of extravagance and waste! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: Don't try to fluster me with your bluster, bub. Like the song says, you ain't so big, you're just tall, that's all.

In brief California land use news this week: Curbed and the LA Times reported that the legendary La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association and attorney Robert Silverstein may have reversed the opening of a 22-story, 299-unit residential development in Hollywood. Because of the neighborhood challenge, developer CIM group may have to displace the first 40 tenants who have moved into its Sunset/Gordon tower. A judge found CIM's construction permits invalid after the association objected that demolition of the prior building on the site was improper. Potential applicants for HUD's $1 billion in resiliency money may be interested in a large, varied calendar of webinars discussing the program and its goals. For prior notes on the program see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587. Environment California held an event in Santa Cruz to remind the public of the November 14 comment deadline on EPA's "Waters of the United States" proposed rule. The comment deadline on the proposed rule has already been extended twice . If approved, the EPA's proposal would extend the definition of waters that the Clean Water Act regulates to include smaller bodies of water and even wetlands. The EPA has given the proposed rule its own Web page at http://www2.epa.gov/uswaters. The Cupertino General Plan is nearing final approval. A recent Mercury News item lays out the remaining short timetable and (unsurprisingly) notes density levels in the housing element as an outstanding issue. Los Angeles County's running conflict over large solar arrays flared up in the San Fernando Valley. The LA Times reported a lawsuit was filed by PHL LLC and Foothill Solar, LLC  alleging the North Valley Area Planning Commission unfairly rejected a project application as incomplete. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported a conflict over airport zoning "derailed" the city's General Plan update process this week. Two City Council members held up the plan by refusing to join a vote overriding the local Airport Land Use Commission's "safety zone" limits on development at the south end of the city. The General Plan itself can't pass until a deal is reached or the Council changes membership -- but that membership may change at the upcoming November election. The Tribune had editorialized that the airport body was inexplicably over-limiting construction in "the logical place for residential development to occur." The Tribune also reported that environmental advocates sued the Cambria Community Services District under CEQA, alleging the district tried to build "a permanent desalination plant intended for long-term operation under the guise of a temporary emergency facility." In another case of what seem to be frequent small-airport control issues lately, the city of Ontario was in litigation with the City of LA and its Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) entity. The Bakersfield Press-Enterprise reported Ontario alleged LAWA was neglecting the Ontario airport's marketing but also wouldn't cede control to local managers. The SF Business Times reported Mayor Ed Lee has a "housing working group" trying to negotiate incentives to get private developers to add affordable housing to the city. Also this week in San Francisco, the Chron reported the developer of "what will become the highest condo tower west of the Mississippi River" agreed to pay $1.26 million per unit rather than build 11 units of below-market-rate housing. Last summer in San Francisco the MonkeyParking app startup was cease-and-desisted , parodied , and finally left town . Now it's having a similar time in LA County. The League of California Cities spotted news that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills banned the app, which helps people to sell the news that they're about to leave a public parking space. West Hollywood was considering a ban , and the LA City Council's transportation committee has voted to draft an ordinance banning private sales of public parking. The LA Times quoted Councilmember Mike Bonin calling it "the stealing economy masquerading as the sharing economy." Large-scale San Francisco housing development has finally branched out into the low-rise residential Inner Sunset neighborhood. J.K. Dineen reports in the SF Chronicle that Westlake Urban of San Mateo has proposed to replace the 86-unit Kirkham Heights apartment complex with 460 units of housing likely to serve medical staff and students from nearby UCSF. Sacramento Bee water writer Matt Weiser visited the Carlsbad desalination plant for a news feature on the project as a test case. He writes that it's being widely watched to see if its physical, environmental and financial challenges can be met in ways that work for the rest of California. His article makes a helpful companion piece to an earlier, more legalistic Latham and Watkins review of the Carlsbad project as "a case study of permitting and approvals." The Metropolitan Water District raised incentives for SoCal water agencies to recycle, recover or desalinate water. It's now offering $340 per acre-foot . (Item via League of CA Cities.) The Santa Barbara Independent reports the Arroyo Toad may soon no longer be officially endangered. The San Diego U-T reported the city of Escondido rejected a shelter for immigrant children "for reasons including traffic, safety, parking and community character." The San Francisco Planning Commission is expected in November to continue review of a Reasonable Modification Ordinance for disability accommodations. The measure would create a process for an individual with a disability to request reasonable modification to a building to remove a barrier to fair housing access. The LA Daily News reported the City Council gave Anschutz Entertainment Group "an additional six months to find a football team to play in the developer's proposed downtown stadium." Per most recent glance at the CalEPA Environmental Justice page , there's still no word on the designations of "disadvantaged" census tracts that were due by the end of September. As we've noted before, it's a tough, highly political decision . Early this month the Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a thoughtful extended news feature on The Sea Ranch and its lasting effects on regulation of California coastal development.

A new template for land use and preservation is forming across some 1,800 square miles of Los Angeles County's high, dry northeastern backlands. Its first increment could establish some key development permissions by mid-November, especially affecting the large Centennial new-town design, other construction plans, and solar energy arrays. The Antelope Valley (AV) Area Plan is tentatively scheduled for a vote by the LA County Supervisors on November 12. That approval, if granted, will be significant -- especially for the currently rural site along Highway 138 where the Tejon Ranch Co. has for years been laying regulatory groundwork to build a master-planned town it calls Centennial. There are also General Plan revisions afoot in two areas that affect the AV Plan area most: changes to boundaries and rules for Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) and a renewable energy ordinance. (A plan to develop transit-oriented districts (TODs) is part of the same General Plan update process but affects more urban areas. The north edge of its "overview map" is in Pasadena.) The Antelope Valley plan area (see map ) covers rugged northeastern Los Angeles County, from the southeast-slanting San Andreas Fault to the Ventura, Kern and San Bernardino County lines, excluding incorporated areas around Lancaster and Palmdale, and applying as a limited overlay to federal property such as Edwards Air Force Base. It extends south of the fault to include the whole mass of the San Gabriel Mountains (including the new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument ), and the north half or so of the Angeles National Forest above Santa Clarita. The Centennial site is near the current northern limit of suburban development that looks toward Los Angeles. Above it are mountain ridges that, for the present, occupy a gap between the footprints of greater Los Angeles and greater Bakersfield. Mark Child, deputy director of advance planning with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, said the proposed SEA designation and governing ordinance changes would most affect the Antelope Valley area rather than other parts of L.A. County, especially now that sensitive habitats in the Santa Monica Mountains are being separately regulated by the new Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan and, farther inland, the Santa Monica Mountains North Area Plan. He said some SEAs are affected in the San Gabriel Valley and Puente Hills, but they are small in comparison to the Antelope Valley. Environmental and community activists' concerns have included keeping rural places rural, ensuring "heavy agriculture" upzoning doesn't allow solar arrays as of right (Child said it doesn't), and, especially, limiting density in three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs) that the AV Area Plan designates for concentrated development. They have also questioned whether enough big-picture environmental regulation is in place to avoid harmful cumulative effects. Major affected landscapes include the western tip of the Mojave Desert with its wild poppy fields and Joshua trees, and the knot of the Coast, Transverse and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, including condor habitat, where I-5 climbs over Tejon Pass toward LA from the foot of the Central Valley. Landowners, from owners of single-house lots to managers of mining and ranching concerns, have been asking nervously how certain they can be of future requirements under tiered processes that the program-level rules are designed to set up but not resolve. In addition to Centennial and other housing developments, major affected industries and projects under the AV Area Plan and General Plan amendments include aggregate mines, cattle ranchlands, oil and gas wells, and solar energy businesses. For L.A. County's rural lands at present, it isn't easy to parse what will be decided where, how conclusively, and when. There are multiple rulemaking tracks; there are tiering provisions in the proposed rules that defer major decisions selectively, and there's uncertainty yet to resolve on how the new rules will take up the threads of older planning processes. The AV Area Plan and Centennial As previously reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587, the Regional Planning Commission approved the AV Area Plan September 27. Its accompanying Draft EIR remained open for comment until October 6 -- viewed as procedurally possible because the Commission's action September 27 was only a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors; the Supervisors bear responsibility for definitely approving the plan and certifying its EIR. which will probably occur at the same time. (Sitting as the Airport Land Use Commission, the Regional Planning Commission approved the plan's compatibility with relevant airport plans.) The AV Area Plan, updating the existing 1986 General Plan component for the area, has been under review since 2008 in what has also been labeled the "Town and Country" planning process. However, new versions of the plan, and an extensive new Draft EIR, were published on a brisk schedule this summer, with the DEIR Notice of Preparation (NOP) posted June 12, revised planning documents posted July 23 and August 22, and the extensive DEIR documents posted August 22. (Comments on the AV Area Plan leading up to the September 27 hearing are labeled as "correspondence" and "supplemental package" documents as part of the meeting materials .) The new plan would encourage the proposed Centennial development by establishing policy statements in favor of upzoning at the intended town site. However, it would not allow building permits to be granted for the new densities as of right. Centennial's proponents would still have to bring a more detailed proposal through a full specific plan review process -- and it's not clear when they will decide the time is ripe for them to follow through. According to Child and Supervising Regional Planner Susan Tae, out of the three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs), only the west EOA, which includes the Centennial site, has a strict provision to ensure future review is coordinated. Any proposal to build more than five units of housing in the west EOA would trigger a requirement to begin a full specific plan coordinating infrastructure and environmental protections for the whole area. The county could also choose to begin a community plan there in the next five years. The published summary of September 27 changes to the AV Area Plan says affected properties in the west EOA are those of two particular owners: the Tejon Ranch Company and Bruce Burrows. In the west EOA, the AV Area Plan sets as general policy the possibility of zoning levels up to maximum caps described in the Plan's Map 2.1 . The green-veined yellow patches of H5 zoning (five housing units per acre) as shown in the map's upper left corner would be defined as generically appropriate for the east half of the proposed Centennial development site. Later on, the actual zoning changes would need to be adopted legislatively as part of a future specific or community plan, and their exact values would depend on the overall design of the project as then proposed. (In a choice that confused some activists, the DEIR's Figure 3.7, at Page 27 of Chapter 3 , sets out the lower A-2-10 "heavy agriculture" densities that would apply without a specific plan.) The Center for Biological Diversity has objected starting at the NOP stage to the use of any H5 zoning on the Centennial site. As of a Tejon Ranch Co. amended 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last March, the company was still discussing plans for 23,000 units of housing at Centennial. County planning staff say the maximum buildout under zoning envisoned by the AV Area Plan would be less -- more like 17,000 units -- but either would be a long way from the site's current population of zero. The Tejon Ranch Co. as of its March report held a 72.83% interest in the project's proponent entity, Centennial Founders, LLC, with minority partners Tri Pointe Homes (formerly Pardee Homes), Lewis Investment Company and Standard Pacific Corp. . (For prior discussion of Tejon Ranch real estate plans in the context of the Kern Water Bank EIR ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3597.) SEA boundaries changing by stages Proposed new SEA boundaries are important for Centennial and for the AV area plan in general. Although the new SEAs are larger, it's disputed whether they actually increase environmental protection. Where former SEAs required buffer zones to surround them, the new approach is to expand the defined boundaries to include buffer zones within them. Similar changes were already adopted in 2011 for the Santa Clarita Valley area, which includes the Newhall Ranch planned-town site. (See http://planning.lacounty.gov/sea/proposed.) The Commission's September 27 action removed the SEA designation from a major area of the Centennial town site, between its east boundary at a farm road incongruously named "300th Street", and the west branch of the California Aqueduct, which forms a north-south divider across the site. (A separate SEA pullback limited barriers to development in the Central Economic Opportunity Area southwest of Edwards. For details see the September 27 summary document .) Child wrote that the west EOA changes "aim to strike a balance between habitat conservation and environmental protection, and economic development that is important to the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles County as a whole. As the most valuable habitat and habitat linkage within this landholding is on the western end where the SEA designation remains, the area removed seems not as critical to the overall viability of SEA protections in the area." But Greg Medeiros, vice president of the Centennial Founders LLC development entity, asked the Commission on October 8 to also remove SEA status from the area west of the Aqueduct, saying, "Both commercial and residential land use remain within the SEA overlay within the west EOA boundary. This commercial development is critical in developing a balanced community that can provide necessary services and jobs." He assured: "Removing the SEA designation does not mean that biological resources will be ignored. Project-level environmental review during site design within the EOAs will require avoidance and mitigation if necessary to comply with both CEQA and Fish and Wildlife permitting requirements." Countywide, the proposed SEA changes have been divided among three different regulatory calendars: Some SEA boundary revisions that form part of the AV Area Plan will be before the Supervisors for approval November 12. SEA boundary changes elsewhere in the county go to the Regional Planning Commission as part of a General Plan update item December 10. Revisions to the current Draft 6 of the SEA Ordinance, which calls for protective measures to be determined in part by environmental reviews of each building site, were taken off calendar as of the Commission's October 8 meeting to allow more discussion. The issues taken off calendar as "ordinance" matters include issues such as whether existing uses will be grandfathered. For example, at the October 8 hearing, Jeff Mace of ERA Energy asked if his company's 3000 acres of oil and gas wells and grazing land would be subject to new SEA requirements with effects such as new fencing requirements. Some landowners saw the proposed environmental review process as a source of uncertainty. At the hearing, land use consultant Peter Gonzalez said he couldn't clearly advise a landowner on building rights in an SEA zone if a county biologist's review still had to determine each parcel's level of sensitivity under the proposed SEA ordinance. Marta Golding Brown, representing the Building Industry Association for Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, told the Commission that the proposed mitigation ratios were excessive in requiring up to four acres open space for one acre of disturbed land, and the SEA boundaries themselves were oversized: "The SEA expansion virtually walls off all unbuilt or remaining lands in the jurisdiction. As a result, future population growth will need to be accommodated by dramatically increasing densities in the existing developed areas." She urged the Commission to combine SEA and CEQA mitigation processes in a single procedure and closed with the comment, "Please reduce the SEA overlays in the county to those areas having biota to protect." Environmental advocates weren't happy with the proposed SEA ordinance either: some said it had the unintended effect of elevating mitigation into a first choice for developers instead of encouraging them to avoid doing harm in the first place. Gary George of Audubon California told the Commission, "It's kind of a free pass straight to compensatory mitigation." Another environmental concern was whether single-family homes ought to be exempted from SEA requirements, or whether they, too, should be required to reduce their footprints. High SEAs A perennial concern in northwestern LA County has been whether the SEAs in the high desert and mountains provide sufficient "connectivity" or "linkages" for wildlife to travel among the several types of habitat that converge in the area, especially where I-5 traverses the Grapevine. (A slightly dated but informative "connectivity and construction" map from April gives a sense of the principles guiding SEA designations.) Child said a key purpose of updating the boundaries was to allow for linkages -- not necessarily to maintain land in "pristine" condition, but to allow for wildlife movement -- for example, by maintaining a corridor of grassland that might not itself be valuable habitat, but that would allow wildlife to move between developed areas. For the Centennial site an added uncertainty for activists is whether currently envisioned planning processes will make use of the work already done in an SEA-related environmental advisory process on a prior Centennial specific plan effort that was begun in 2008 but then deferred. As suggested by a 2008 Center for Biological Diversity press release , the SEATAC was sympathetic to critics who questioned not just how development might be made more eco-friendly at Centennial, but why any new project had to be built on the site.  The September 8, 2008, minutes of a SEATAC meeting on Centennial, still available on the county's site , shows a level of concerned review that gets literally into the weeds. The board discusses protection of grasslands, creekside habitat, watersheds and linkages, concerns about "leapfrog" developments surrounded by open space, the fortunes of species including badgers, lizards, owls, pumas, and the Tehachapi Pocket Mouse, a request to hear more about the futures of antelopes and raptors, and possible relocation of the Pacific Crest Trail onto the Tejon Ranch lands. Child wrote: "The future level and scope of environmental/biological review in this area would not be less careful than the review by SEATAC in 2008. The project is still subject to CEQA requirements and the County's consultation with responsible and trustee agencies would ensure that the project identifies and mitigates for any and all potential environmental impacts, including biota. Comments received from SEATAC regarding the project specifically, and the general region as important habitat land, would still be applied in the review of the project." Tae wrote that where SEATAC review is currently required for all SEA Conditional Use Permits (CUPs), the new ordinance would direct some projects to the county biologist, and others to SEATAC, with SEATAC "considered the higher review". Centennial's design was publicized more specifically before about 2008. The project stressed its environmental smart growth aspirations, discussing ways the project could be environmentally responsible and partly self-contained, even if residents commuted to jobs elsewhere. Now Centennial's main link from the Tejon Ranch Web site is a "Coming Soon" placeholder page. More detailed prior materials on the plan , including previews of the town's design , have been taken offline since last September . The Centennial Scout, a weblog formerly maintained for Centennial Founders, LLC by its community development manager, last posted in August 2011. It remains uncertain when the Centennial Founders management may decide the time is right to go ahead with their specific plan. So it's clearly enough in the project's interest to lock in as many permissions as possible for the 20-year duration of a General Plan update. In the meantime, the Ranch's interest sounds warmer with respect to its more recently proposed Grapevine development in Kern County. The Tejon Ranch Co.'s amended 10-K as filed in March 2014 stated, "California regulatory dynamics may impact the future ability to entitle new development so we began the land planning and entitlement process for Grapevine during 2013 to take advantage of the existing favorable pro-business and political climate in Kern County." The Tejon Ranch is the subject of a 2008 settlement in which five environmental groups, including the Sierra Club but not the Center for Biological Diversity, agreed not to oppose future development on the ranch in return for a conservation program affecting much of the Tejon Ranch land. Opposition to Centennial and other projects has been less widely expressed in the six years since then. The March amended 10-K stated, "The Conservation Agreement we entered into with five major environmental organizations in 2008 is designed to minimize the opposition from environmental groups to these projects and eliminate or reduce the time spent in litigation once governmental approvals are received. Litigation by environmental groups has been a primary cause of delay and loss of financial value for real estate development projects in California." Solar up next On a slower schedule, hearings are expected this winter on a renewable energy land use ordinance for projects such as solar arrays. Tae wrote that the draft EIR would likely appear in November, with the Regional Planning Commission to take it up in January. Tae and Child wrote that the ordinance has to reach the Supervisors by March to help the county qualify for a grant out of the Renewable Resource Trust Fund related to Assembly Bill X1-13. Child said there had been anxieties that a large-scale upzoning of about 190,000 acres to A-2, "heavy agriculture," in the Antelope Valley Area Plan would allow large solar arrays as of right. In fact he said that while A-2 zoning is a prerequisite for solar arrays, the ordinance would regulate such approvals and they would require conditional use permits to go through. The county's public tally of proposed utility-scale renewable energy projects to date shows most such projects are solar; there have been a few wind turbine schemes. The renewable energy ordinance review will need to interact with the California and federal EIR/EIS for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan , which was posted for review September 26. Major solar energy developers are among the commenters on early stages of the energy ordinance.

In brief legal news this week: The State Supreme Court confirmed a victory for high-speed rail by declining to review the Third District's ruling in California High-Speed Rail Authority v. Superior Court (Tos) . The case upheld the High-Speed Rail Authority's authorization to issue bonds for the project. The Sacramento Bee had details on immediate reactions. For details of the ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3546. Planetizen has more context at http://www.planetizen.com/articles/node-71723 . Prominent developer-side firms had asked the State Supreme Court to order publication of Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) v. County of San Diego , but the high court refused . What remains on the record is only the Fourth Appellate District's unpublished ruling in favor of the EIR to replace a city-owned historic warehouse building with mixed-use development. The State Supreme Court denied requests for both review and depublication of the Fifth District's ruling in North Coast Rivers Alliance v. Westlands Water District . That ruling upheld the application of a grandfathering rule to exempt a two-year interim water contract from CEQA review because its predecessor contract was set up in 1963, before CEQA was invented. For details of the Fifth District decision see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3539. (And in separate news, the LA Times ' Bettina Boxall wrote a stemwinder of a water feature on a proposed deal to let the Westlands Water District off from a $360 million debt to the Bureau of Reclamation for its part in the extension of the Central Valley Project.) Judge Timothy Frawley confirmed his rejection of both of the CEQA lawsuits against the Sacramento Kings basketball arena project. For prior recent moves in the case see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3599. Local coverage in the Willits News celebrated the North Coast Rail Authority's CEQA exemption victory last month over two environmental groups who opposed increased use of an existing rail system. The paper reports the First District appellate decision (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3584) may allow lumber to be shipped from Willits by rail for the first time since the 1990s. Encinitas homeowners Thomas Frick and Barbara Lynch, whose effort to build a seawall has been blocked by the Coastal Commission and the Fourth District state appellate court, have now requested review from the California Supreme Court. The attorney filing their appeal was Paul J. Beard of the Pacific Legal Foundation. Beard told the San Diego Union-Tribune , "We are asking the California Supreme Court to hear this case so that these homeowners, and all property owners along the coast, can be protected from the Coastal Commission's obsessive crusade against seawalls." For detailed coverage of the Fourth District's decision, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3572. The Fourth District's online docket shows it denied a request for rehearing in September. The landlord of the "Friendly Village" mobile home park in Milpitas has appealed the city's federal court victory (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3567), which blocked it from raising rents by 50 to 90 percent. The Mercury News reported the city has already approved $30,000 for attorneys' fees to fight the appeal before the Ninth Circuit. (Item via League of CA Cities.)

In most urban areas, the promise of 25,000 new jobs would cause celebrations. But the laws of economics take strange turns in Silicon Valley. This summer, the Santa Clara City Council approved CityPlace, a $6.5 billion mega-development on the site of a city-owned golf course (which was previously a landfill). It is designed in part to be the downtown that the valley, populated by office parks and bedroom communities, does not have. The project, developed by Related Cos., will encompass a total of 9.7 million square feet, more than half of which will be office space, and 1.1 million square feet of retail. Amid this enormity will be 1,360 residential units. But that’s far too few, according to Santa Clara’s biggest neighbor. While Santa Clara city leaders are hailing the project, their counterparts in San Jose are wondering something else: Where is everyone going to live? And how are they going to get there? Shortly after CityPlace’s approval, and an accompanying general plan amendment, San Jose filed a lawsuit against Santa Clara in Santa Clara County Superior Court; Related Cos. is named as a real party of interest. It is believed to be the first time San Jose has sued a neighboring city over development issues. The suit alleges that the project violates the California Environmental Quality Act on the grounds that the city did not properly consider the traffic, water, and economic impacts of the massive project. In particular, San Jose alleges that Santa Clara has failed to plan for the housing needs of the project’s estimated 25,000 workers. They will, San Jose’s argument goes, be forced to seek housing in San Jose and thereby push housing prices even higher. CityPlace exacerbates what San Jose officials describe as an already challenging situation. According to city officials, 32 percent of Santa Clara workers live in San Jose, with only 8 percent of Santa Clarans working in San Jose. “As a city, San Jose is providing housing not just for workers employed in Santa Clara, but for workers in other cities across the Peninsula and South Bay,” said San Jose spokesperson Elisabeth Handler. It’s a region-wide problem – and it’s an old fight in Silicon Valley, where San Jose – a city of almost 1 million people – has long complained of bearing the housing burden for smaller, richer Silicon Valley cities where the jobs are located. “In the Bay Area there is an extraordinary imbalance between job creation and housing production which puts pressure on housing prices,” said Sarah Karlinsky, a policy analyst for the regional urbanist advocacy group SPUR. She noted that the region added over 450,000 jobs from 2010 to 2014, but scarcely more than 10 percent as many housing units. Santa Clara officials point out that the city’s general plan calls for 10,000 new housing units. Santa Clara’s population is 120,000 while San Jose’s is 998,000. “Create profound environmental impacts which, unnecessarily, have a regional effect…. shifts the environmental burden and expense to support that economic development onto neighboring cities and counties by limiting housing within the development,” wrote San Jose’s attorneys in the complaint. “Respondent's EIR has understated and/or whitewashed the impacts the project creates, leaving its own citizens and neighboring communities to bear the burdens, risks, and costs of these impacts.” The complaint further accuses Santa Clara of disregarding the principles of its own general plan, which call for reducing in vehicle miles traveled, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and preservation of neighborhoods. Santa Clara has hired prominent CEQA attorney Tina Thomas to defend it. City officials have fired back at San Jose alleging that it has pursued developments close to its border with Santa Clara without consulting the city and that it has aggressively recruited businesses and new jobs. Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gilmor did not respond to requests for comment. In essence, both cities’ housing shortages, and the resulting jobs-housing imbalance, has made economic development an unusually controversial issue. San Jose hopes to reach a settlement without bringing the suit to court. “As a city, we believe in working with the other cities in our region to jointly address the economic and quality of life issues that impact all of us, without involving the courts,” said Handler. Contacts & Resources Santa Clara CityPlace Project Page San Jose Complaint (pdf) Elisabeth Handler , Public Information Manager, Office of Economic Development, City of San Jose, elisabeth.handler@sanjoseca.gov Sarah Karlinsky , Senior Policy Advisor, San Francisco Planning & Urban Research, skarlinsky@spur.org

The Coastal Act trumps both the Density Bonus Act and the Mello Act, which requires affordable housing in coastal areas. That’s the conclusion of the Second District Court of Appeal, which upheld the City of Los Angeles’s decision to deny a 15-unit housing project in Venice that would have replaced a three-unit building. The ruling reaffirms the power of the Coastal Act, whose primary purpose is to protect coastal resources. In this case, Los Angeles officials decided that the visual incompatibility of the new project, proposed by Kalnel Gardens LLC, with existing buildings violated the Coastal Act even though some buildings nearby were of similar scale. The court had an easy time with the Density Bonus Act, since that law expressly states that it does not supercede the Coastal Act. The court had a more difficult time with the Mello Act, which specifically applies within the coastal zone. In addition, the Coastal Act states that its provisions should not be used to allow local governments to obstruct the construction of affordable housing under other laws. However, the appellate court found, the Coastal Act also requires that the design of new developments protect scenic views and be “visually compatible with the character of the surrounding areas.” (Pub. Resources Code, § 30251.) That was the basis of the City’s decision to reject the Kalnel project, and on appeal Kalnel does not contend there was insufficient evidence to support that finding.” Kalnel proposed a project that included five single-family homes and five duplexes and received a density bonus because two units were reserved for very-low-income families. Under the density bonus law, Kalnel also got a height variance. City staff gave the project various approvals, including a coastal development permit, but neighbors appealed the project to the Planning Commission, claiming that height, density, setbacks, and other visual characteristics were out of step with the neighborhood. At a hearing before the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission, neighbors claimed one- and two-story structures outnumbered larger structures such as the one proposed by a 9:1 ratio. However, Kalnel’s lawyer ultimately said the project was “all a case about affordable housing and density bonus.” Kalnel lost all the appeals, including the appeal to the Los Angeles City Council, and then filed a lawsuit. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled that the city had violated the Housing Affordability Act and that the project conformed to density bonus rules. However, the court ruled that the three housing laws are subordinate to the coastal act and substantial evidence existed that coastal resources would be threatened by the project. Perhaps the most important issue was whether the Coastal Act trumps the density bonus law – a law that developers often use to increase the density of their project above local zoning limits in exchange for providing affordable housing. But this proved to be an easy issue for the court to resolve. Writing for the three-judge panel, Justice Laurence Rubin simply noted that the The Density Bonus Act (§ 65915) states: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to supersede or in any way alter or lessen the effect or application of the .” (§ 65915, subd. (m).)” The Mello Act proved more complicated, since the law is specifically designed to ensure that affordable housing is provided in the coastal zone. Whenever a new project is built in the coastal zone, the law requires the developer to provide either new or replacement affordable housing. The Coastal Act also specifies coastal considerations do not permit local governments to avoid other affordable housing requirements. “Standing alone, these two provisions might be construed as giving the Mello Act primacy over the Coastal Act,” wrote Justice Rubin. “However, the Coastal Act also requires that the design of new developments protect scenic views and be ‘visually compatible with the character of the surrounding areas.’ (Pub. Resources Code, § 30251.)” In further discussion about the conflict between coastal resources and affordable housing, Justice Rubin wrote: ‘Which interpretation is most protective of coastal resources? One that requires Mello Act housing even if it blocks coastal access, intrudes into environmentally sensitive areas, or is visually incompatible with existing uses, or one that requires application of the Mello Act’s affordable housing requirements within the coastal zone so long as those housing projects abide by the Coastal Act’s overall protective provisions? He concluded: “Remembering the Legislature’s statements that protecting coastal resources is a paramount concern because those resources are of vital and enduring interest, it seems clear that the latter interpretation must prevail.” The appellate court declined to consider the question of the Housing Affordability Act because of a technical error in the appeal made by Kalnel. The Case: Kalnel Gardens LLC v. City of Los Angeles , No. B264434 (September 29, 2016). The Lawyers: For Kalnel Gardens: Allen Abschez, Loeb & Loeb, aabshez@loeb . com For City of Los Angeles: Michael Bostrom, Deputy City Attorney, mailto:Michael.Bostrom@lacity.org

Everyone’s favorite factoid about the Golden Gate Bridge concerns its paint job. Crews are endlessly refreshing its orange coat, working from one end to the other throughout the year and then starting all over again. Such are the ravages of salt and fog. It’s a mundane story about the need for constant maintenance of an iconic piece of infrastructure. Another crucial — if less beloved — piece of California’s transportation infrastructure operates much the same way, albeit in a longer time frame. I have flown into and out of Los Angeles International Airport on average once per month for the better part of three decades. Just as the Golden Gate Bridge is always being painted, LAX is always under construction or renovation –in sometimes valiant, sometimes halfhearted , usually halting attempts to spruce up L.A.’s “nine terminals linked by a traffic jam.”  It’s one traffic jam that may finally end. Last week, Los Angeles World Airports released the environmental impact report  for what is the latest, and perhaps final, piece of major upgrades to LAX. The Landside Access Modernization Program (LAMP) includes a consolidated rental car center, two intermodal facilities, and other aesthetic and mobility upgrades. In other words, LAX’s overhaul is about everything but aviation. Previous attempts to comprehensively upgrade and expand the airport have failed every which way for decades. But this one seems serious. It includes a new rail station and people-mover, to tap into and leverage Metro’s Crenshaw and Green lines, and it has a possible 2024 Olympics in mind.  As we ponder the wonders of a consolidated rental car lot, a people mover, and replacement of or massive renovations to those nine (newly renovated) terminals, it’s important to understand that the state of LAX centers on not just aviation, mobility, or even economic development. It is also very much an element of land use, planning, and urban growth.  Most obviously, LAX would not be a global hub were its urban region not itself a global powerhouse. Unlike at the Dubais and Atlantas of the world, many people don’t change planes. More people actually get on and off airplanes at LAX than at almost any other major world airport. Angelenos are blessed to be connected to the world in ways that folks in Chico, Fresno, San Diego — or any other American city short of Chicago, for that matter — can hardly imagine. (I’m drafting this blog on a nonstop flight from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, whose terminals are massive enough to make LAX’s terminals look like Cessnas next to A380s.) The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. estimates that this kind of connectivity is good for over economic impacts of over $120 billion per year.  While LAX is a global institution, it is also a hyperlocal one. The new plan has arisen largely because of a settlement between LAWA and its neighbors in Westchester this summer. They and the airport had been bickering and negotiating over heaven and earth for as long as anyone can remember. The last major settlement was in 2006. A community of people living in largely middle-class, single-family homes, Westchester residents are quintessential NIMBY’s, opposing an admittedly concerning land use. The settlement's most important provision is its cap of 79 million annual passengers — a mere 4 million above its current usage. This keeps LAX the seventh-busiest airport in the world for the moment. But it all but ensures that it will soon be eclipsed by the likes of Shanghai, Istanbul, and Hong Kong. And the cap mirrors larger debates about growth in Los Angeles, in which opponents of growth cannot believe that the city can accommodate more residents, no matter what strategies the city lays out and no matter how much new transit is built. "These old ‘NO LAX Expansion’ signs are now officially vintage,” wrote Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin on his Facebook page. "From now on, everyone is saying yes to modernization and improving our airport and passenger experience, and saying 'hell no' to expansion." Of course, LAX only has such testy neighbors because, at this point, it’s an old airport. The empty land surrounding Mines Field filled in decades ago. Meanwhile, Pudong is a good 25 miles from central Shanghai. It too will get consumed one day.  Ironically, a shiny new LAX will probably be more appealing to travelers. They’ll get a far better first impression of our city, and it’s likely that more than 79 million people will want to fly through LAX. When demand butts up against the cap, it will all but ensure higher fares. Maybe this tension will finally lead to the holy grail of Southern California transportation: regionalization. Westchester residents have always wanted more passengers to use the region’s smaller airports, particularly Ontario, which, unlike Burbank and Long Beach, can and wants to expand. At long last, the City of Ontario took control of l ong-suffering ONT , meaning that expansion may be in the offing.  What of the design for the “new” LAX? Like those of every other modern airport, they are inevitably flawed but also probably fine. Conceptual renderings show sleek, generic people-mover stations and similarly inoffensive designs for the other facilities. I happen to think that many of the new mega-airports, like Pudong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Dubai, and Bangkok are over-engineered and inappropriately massive. LAX will always be intimate by comparison. At least it feels like it was designed by humans and not, say, a self-aggrandizing totalitarian government.  Now that LAX’s future is certain and Ontario controls its own density, there’s only thing left to do: reopen Palmdale Airport and finish that little high-speed rail link we’ve always talked about.  Image courtesy of LAWA.

A longtime anti-poverty lawyer and his wife have lost an appellate case against the City of West Hollywood in which they challenged the city’s imposition of inclusionary housing fees on their project. The ruling strengthens the power of local governments to enforfe inclusionary housing policies, partly by reinforcing an appellate court ruling from San Jose last year. Shelah and Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer sued West Hollywood over a wide variety of fee-related issues on their 11-unit Croft Avenue housing project, including the inclusionary housing fees, which totaled more than $500,000. But the Second District Court of Appeal rejected a wide variety of arguments and said the city had acted properly under the Mitigation Fee Act (AB 1600) in setting out an overall schedule for inclusionary housing fees. Instead, the Second District ruled that the fees were appropriately based on the city’s overall lack of affordable housing. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Justice Victoria Chaney said that “the purpose of the in-lieu housing fee here is not to defray the cost of increased demand on public services resulting from Croft’s specific development project, but rather to combat the overall lack of affordable housing.” Relying on California Building Industry Assn. v. City of San Jose (2015) 61 Cal.4th 435 , she added: “This type of fee is not ‘for the purpose of mitigating the adverse impact of new development but rather to enhance the public welfare by promoting the use of available land for the development of housing that would be available to low- and moderate-income households.’” The Lehrer-Graiwers, operating as 616 Croft Ave. LLC, have sought for many years to demolish two single-family homes just south of Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood and replace them with an 11-unit project. (Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer was for many years a lawyer with the Western Center on Law and Poverty and later worked on many social justice cases as a lawyer in private practice.) The Lehrer-Graiwers won city approval for the project in 2005 but because of the downturn in the economy did not seek to pull permits until 2011. At that time, the city demanded that they pay higher fees totaling $580,000, including $540,000 for the inclusionary housing fee. The Lehrer-Graiwers paid the fees under protest and sued They challenged the city’s fee ordinance both on its face and as applied to their project. The appellate court concluded that the facial challenge was time-barred because the ordinance was adopted 10 years before the lawsuit was filed. More importantly, the appellate court rejected the as-applied challenge as well. The Lehrer-Graiwers made a wide range of arguments, including the idea that the fees were really taxes under Proposition 218. The court rejected all these arguments. Most important, the appellate court concluded that the inclusionary housing fees did not need to be tied to the impact of the Lehrer-Graiwers’s project but, rather, could be part of an overall effort to tackle the affordable housing problem in West Hollywood. First, the court concluded that the burden of proof that the fees are reasonable lies with the city, not with the developers. The Lehrer-Graiwers had argued otherwise, citing Prop. 218. But citing San Jose , the court said: “The purpose of the in-lieu housing fee here is not to defray the cost of increased demand on public services resulting from Croft’s specific development project, but rather to combat the overall lack of affordable housing.” Among other things, the court ruled on Ehrlich v. City of Culver City (1996) 12 Cal.4th 854, which distinguished between fees charged on a project basis and fees charged as part of an overall city policy. Partly based on this reasoning – and again relying on San Jose – the court said the challenge should not have been based on the application of individual fees to an individual project. “Although the fee must be reasonable, the inquiry is not about the reasonableness of the individual calculation of fees related to Croft’s development’s impact on affordable housing,” the court wrote. “The inquiry is whether the fee schedule itself is reasonably related to the overall availability of affordable housing in West Hollywood.” The Case: 616 Croft Ave LLC v. City of West Hollywood , No. B266660 (September 23, 2016) The Lawyers: For 616 Croft Ave (the Lehrer-Graiwers): David Lanferman, Rutan & Tucker, dlanferman@rutan.com For City of West Hollywood: Michael Jenkins ( mjenkins@localgovlaw.com ) and Christi Hogin ( hogin@localgovlaw.com ), Jenkins & Hogan Never forget to clean your HTML code and double check your content before publishing an article!

Reversing an appellate court decision, the California Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that courts should substitute their “abstract” judgment for the lead agency’s judgment as to what constitutes a “new” project that requires more extensive environmental analysis. The ruling appears to clear up a conflict between appellate rulings from different districts. But the plaintiffs said they still believe they can win the case on remand. The case involved a proposed building program at College of San Mateo, a community college located in the City of San Mateo, that would have involved demolishing some buildings and renovating others. Initially, the college certified a mitigated negative declaration for the building program. Years later, however, the college changed the building program so that some buildings that would have been demolished would be renovated, while the Horticulture Building, which wraps around a horticultural garden, would be demolished. Concluding that the change did not constitute a “new project” under the California Environmental Quality Act, the college issued an addendum to the MND. A group of residents and students calling themselves Friends of the College of San Mateo Gardens sued and won in both San Mateo County Superior Court and the First District Court of Appeal. But in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reversed the First District. “When an agency proposes changes to a previously approved project, CEQA does not authorize courts to invalidate the agency’s action based solely on their own abstract evaluation of whether the agency’s proposal is a new project, rather than a modified version of the old one,” wrote Justice Leondra Kruger in an exceptionally clear and well-written argument. “… An agency that proposes project changes … must determine whether the previous environmental documents retains any relevance in light of the proposed changes and, if so, whether major revisions to the previous environmental document are nevertheless required due to the involvement of new, previously unstudied significant environmental impacts. These are determinations for the agency to make in the first instance, subject to judicial review for substantial evidence.” That was the important legal ruling, and it was pretty clear. Sabrina Teller, a lawyer, for Remy Moose & Manley who argued the case for the college, told SFGate : “The court is still urging a deferential standard.” However, Kruger acknowledged that the case before the Supreme Court did not address all issues in the case – including the question of the legal validity of the CEQA Guidelines sections that allow an MND addendum on a modified project rather than an environmental impact report. That’s one reason why the plaintiffs say they are confident of victory on remand. Susan Brandt-Hawley, lawyer for the plaintiff, said she is still hopeful that the lower courts will distinguish the original and revised project in such a way that her client will win. “Here we have an addendum to a neg dec, and the neg dec was for a preservation project. And the new addendum (actually therefore a revised neg dec) is for a demolition project,” she said in an email to CP&DR. The controversy in the case revolves around so-called “Building 20,” the college’s horticulture building and an adjacent garden that students and nearby residents value for its peacefulness. In 2006, the college adopted a building program that called for retention of Building 20 and demolition of other buildings on campus. The college also certified an MND for the project. Five years later, however, the college changed the building program, calling for renovation of the other buildings and demolition of Building 20 and the garden, along with replanting some of the herbs and bushes in the garden elsewhere on campus. The Friends group sued. In an unpublished opinion three years ago, the First District Court of Appeal ruled against the college, concluding that as a matter of law the 2011 building program was a new project rather than a modified project. The First District relied heavily on Save Our Neighborhood v. Lishman (2006), 140 Cal.App.4 th 1288. In that case, the Third District concluded that the question of a new or modified project was a “threshold question of law”. The following year, the Second District issued a somewhat conflicting ruling in Mani Brothers Real Estate Group v. City of Los Angeles (2007), 153 Cal.App.4 th 1385. In that case, the court found that a 3.3-million-square-foot project was a modification of a 2.7-million-square-foot project on which the city had done an EIR 15 years before. The Second District criticized Save Our Neighborhood , saying it undermined judicial deference of agency decisions. The appellate court in the College of San Mateo case acknowledged this conflict but used the Save Our Neighborhood reasoning, saying that “it is clear from the record tha tht enature of the project has fundamentally and qualitatively changed to the point where the new proposal is actually a new project altogether.” In her ruling for the Supreme Court, Kruger rejected the Save Our Neighborhoods reasoning put forth by the plaintiffs in this case. She wrote that this approach “would assign to court the authority – indeed, the obligation – to determine whether an agency’s proposal qualifies as a new project, in the absence of any standards to govern the inquiry.” She added: “ o ask whether proposed agency action constitutes a new project, purely in the abstract, misses the reason why the characterization matters in the first place….A decision to proceed under CEQA’S subsequent review provisions must thus necessarily rest on a determination – whether implicit or explicit – that the original environmental document contains some informational value.” The Case: Friends of the College of San Mateo Gardens v. San Mateo County Community College District , S215061 (September 19, 2016) The Lawyers: For Friends: Susan Brandt-Hawley, susanbh@preservationlawyers.com For College: Sabrina Teller, steller@rmmenvirolaw.com