Glendale Downtown Development

By Dave G/ Weaver

Much has been made of our downtown development of late. Most of the discussion has revolved around congestion. Below is as complete a history of council actions on this subject.

In 1997, when first elected to our city council, I questioned how potential developers were having to deal with our city in obtaining numerous variances to develop downtown. It seemed like such a mess for developers and could lead to a mishmash of future developments all up and down between Central and Brand. The result was a ten year effort to create a document that would be a roadmap or blueprint of opportunities for downtown Glendale.

That ten year effort led to the completed Downtown Specific Plan (DSP) for development. It was completed in 2006. It included a master environmental document. It was created after numerous public meetings over the years.

At the same time, council down zoned our residential neighborhoods to prevent the construction of more condominium projects that were destroying our residential zones. The intent of the DSP was to concentrate future residential development downtown and not in residential areas. We have succeeded in that.

At the same time that the DSP was being finalized, the Americana was opening. Also at the same time we began to enter the Great Recession. As a consequence, literally no development as permitted by the DSP took place for years.

As we came out of the Great Recession, developers and Wall Street took notice of the need for housing in the Los Angeles region. Wall Street noticed the success of the Americana and identified Glendale as one of eight areas in our region to invest funds. With the DSP as a blueprint of what building opportunities existed in downtown Glendale, developers began to check out our downtown that presented great opportunities to them, over and above our surrounding cities.

In development of the DSP, council and staff looked at every block and every parcel in every block. We determined what heights of every parcel could be. We detailed a number of incentives that could be used to increase the height of their projects., such as architectural merit and open space.

Now we come to the place in time where some members of the public have currently become concerned over too much development. Many of these people believe that this development is creating more congestion and ruining our city.

When most of the developers saw the same opportunities in Glendale around the same few past years, they bought parcels of land within the DPS. Many of those parcels were parking lots and they saw the opportunity to build housing.. No city financing was asked for.

A number of the housing units you see being built could, by right and/or with incentives, be up to 18 stories tall. When we recently reviewed our incentives for increased height as delineated in the DSP, we noted that no one used the incentive for great architectural styling. The main incentive requested was for additional open space. So when I hear that people don't like the "box" buildings, I can understand. But if you look around, great architectural structures are not being built anywhere unless you have a budget of millions of dollars. This city is not likely going to see significant architectural structures built for a long time.

The other major concern seems to be traffic congestion. However, it is absolutely impossible to build any structure without creating congestion. Just look at this fact. To build a parking garage under the building, a hole must be dug. You need to bring in trucks and equipment to excavate the subterranean garage and concrete trucks to pour the foundation and walls. When at ground level, you need to bring in construction materials to build the structure. All these activities create congestions, no different that what happens when you build any structure, including a house.

When built, the congestion will disappear. Consider that the population of Glendale almost doubles during the work day. Congestion abounds just like it does around our schools at 8:00 AM when our children are arriving for school.

Apartments are different. Residents come and go at different hours. They do not produce congestion. My hope is that people who live on the west side of LA or elsewhere will consider moving into our units rather than driving into town. Also, I hope young married couples and senior couples will live their and walk around downtown to eat and play.

One last major point I want to state to you. Glendale is 30.5 square miles. If you take the area bounded by Fwy 134 to the north and Colorado to the south, Maryland to the east and the alley west of Central to the west and calculate the area within that border, you will be greatly surprised. The area within which most of these housing units are being built is about one quarter of one square mile! I have trouble understanding how the impact to such a small area causes so much concern to people.

We are simply building out the downtown. Yes, the construction seems to be endless and being done so rapidly. In normal times, it would have been years to achieve this amount of growth. Well, it is almost over. Other than a couple of other parcels of land, downtown development into the future is coming to an end. And what is being built right now will activate our downtown area, making Glendale an 18-hour a day city that we will all enjoy