Appeal hearing for mixed-use development at 811-815 Ocean Front Walk August 3rd
By Chad Winthrop
An appeal hearing for a mixed-use development planned for Ocean Front Walk in Venice will take place next week.
The Los Angeles Planning Land Use Management (PLUM) earlier this year pushed back an appeal hearing originally set for June 1 to August 3 for an unspecified reason.
In January, the Los Angeles Planning Department signed off on a developers’ plan to demolish three existing structures at 811-815 Ocean Front Walk to make way for the construction of a three-story, mixed-use project. The proposal calls for nine dwelling units above a ground floor restaurant. The development, checking in at 13,412 square feet, would include 18 spaces for parking along with 28 bicycle spaces. The project designer is listed as John Reed of Reed Architectural Group while Vera Sutter is listed as the applicant.
In December a group of local stakeholders filed an appeal against the project. City documents list groups POWER and Citizens Preserving Venice along with individuals Lydia Ponce and Margaret Molloy as the appellants. According to the organization’s website, Citizens Preserving Venice is a non-profit “founded as a group dedicated to preserving and protecting the character and scale of Venice as a Special Coastal Community, including the history and the social, cultural, racial and economic diversity, as well as protecting affordable housing.” In the appeal, the group argued that development violated the Mello Act, a 1982 law that intended to preserve and expand the number of affordable dwelling units in the Coastal Zone areas of the State of California. The current plot contains a two-story family home along with and two buildings, each housing four units, for a total of 10 total units.
“This project proposes the demolition of a 100% residential structure for purposes of a nonresidential (mixed-use commercial) development in the Coastal Zone, which the Mello Act and the [Interim Administrative Procedures for Complying with the Mello Act] prohibits],” reads the appeal. “Especially given the current state of affordable housing in this City, where our elected officials are working hard to “stop the bleeding” of truly affordable housing to luxury housing developers, the hypocrisy from this and other determinations from the Department of City Planning (“DCP”) is unacceptable.”
