Odds and Ends 27 AND 28

OOPS!

It looks like last Friday found me missing concerning Odds and Ends. Probably the only excuse I will attempt is that I feel lousy on my "Fosamax Fridays".
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Councilwoman Janice Hahn's "Comments From Our Councilwoman" in the September, 2007 San Pedro Magazine writes about her recommendations for the Ponte Vista at San Pedro project.

Basically, she supporters the recommendations of her Community Advisory Committee that studied the project for about a year and came up with two recommendations;
Oppose Bob Bisno's current plans for building 1,950 condominium units in northwest San Pedro, and support a density of construction equal to that of "R1" zoning.

Here is a paragraph from her comments:

"At this point, I am in agreement with my advisory committee. Traffic is just too much of a problem on Western Ave. and the project built on this site should not be any denser than its current R-1 zoning. There is no doubt that Los Angeles is facing a housing shortage, which is why I have been so supportive of new housing in downtown San Pedro, where we have the public transportation and roads to support it. But, increased density at the Ponte Vista site is clearly just the wrong fit for San Pedro."
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There are so many things that can make a reasonable person go "HUMMMMMMMM" when considering what the folks at Ponte Vista come up with.

In the DEIR, it states that traffic would be improved on Western Avenue if 2,300-units were built on a site that currently has 245 abandoned dwellings, if all the mitigation proposed by Bisno were enacted. It doesn't state however, that the single most important part of the mitigation proposed by Bisno is already being installed!

For a development of 1,725 non-age restricted units, the DEIR claimed that there would be 199 school-aged students living in the project. Does this mean that now that there may only be 1,100 non-age restricted units, we should expect to see only 126.89 students?

By the way, at least three independent studies came to conclusions that in the 1,725-unit concept, at least 600 students would live at Ponte Vista.

With Bob's new 1,950-unit proposal, the folks at BDC are claiming that traffic counts will actually be less than if only single-family, detached houses were built at Ponte Vista. This may actually be true for the P.M. peak hour. I guess nobody told the folks at BDC that there are 23 other hours during the day when traffic counts will be higher. With a one for twenty-four batting average, I don't think I am going to be batting clean-up.

If you have visited the Ponte Vista Web site recently, I doubt that you will see any illustration of the smallest unit that they want to build on the site. Maybe it is not illustrated because you can visit the Centre Street Lofts Web site and see an illustration of a unit that is about 135 square feet larger than the smallest Ponte Vista unit. At Centre Street Lofts, the 735 square foot unit is their smallest unit.
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Perhaps with Mark Waronek's bailing out from Ponte Vista, it is a true sign that supporting Bob's vision is not the best thing for a politician to do.
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Now this next bit is just plain funny, to me at least.

Lots of L.A. residents living at Miraleste Canyon Estates on Miraleste Drive park their cars on the west side of Miraleste Drive, where the good residents of Rancho Palos Verdes can't park their cars on the street, because the parking has been taken up on the west side.

The City of Rancho Palos Verdes, specifically the Traffic Safety Commission may take up the idea of restricting parking on the west side of Miraleste Drive, from First Street to Rich Lane, because the west side of Miraleste Drive is in the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, where R.P.V. residents live but can't park their cars or have visitors park their cars.

Limiting parking on the west side of Miraleste Drive may be a way for R.P.V. residents to have the parking they should have.

But now wait a minute....if you restrict the parking along the west side of Miraleste Drive between First Street and Rich Lane, there will be a lot of complaints from the folks living at Miraleste Canyon Estates, which mostly is in L.A.

O.K. folks complain away. Please remember however, both sides of Miraleste Drive, between First Street and Rich Lane are within the city limits of the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, and I wouldn't want those folks to get so upset that parking on BOTH sides of the street gets restricted.
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School is going back into session at Dodson shortly. Please watch for the students who cross Western Avenue either to walk towards their homes or to the folks waiting in the cars in the parking lots.