Controversies and Consequences on Whittier Boulevard
- Chris La Farge
- May 7, 2018
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 23, 2018
This is the first in a series taking a critical look at the Whittier Boulevard Specific Plan and it’s role in the 2018 Whittier City Council Elections.
The April 10th Whittier City Council election resulted in the re-election of two of the three incumbents: Joe Vinatieri for Mayor and Fernando Dutra for Council Member from Council District 4. While Vinatieri easily won in a landslide, in dramatic contrast, Dutra narrowly survived with a two percent margin. This District 4 race was fiercely contested, and Dutra is very fortunate given the strength of challenger Lizette Escobedo’s get-out-the-vote, door-to-door canvassing operation.
Not as fortunate was the third incumbent up for re-election, long-time Council Member Bob Henderson of District 2. Newcomer Henry Bouchot defeated Henderson by a solid margin of seven percent. With Bouchot’s victory, the Council “team” of Vinatieri, Henderson, Dutra, and Cathy Warner as described at Dutra’s campaign kick off on 1/14/2018 has been reduced.[i] Dutra’s narrow victory and Henderson’s decisive defeat indicate significant discontent with the status quo at City Hall, at least within Districts 2 and 4. One of the big issues is development. In District 2, at least one commentator stated that the Davidson Drive project may have been the one issue that cost Henderson his seat. In District 4, the Catalina Apartments project and the motel issue are hot topics. Both of these projects arose because of the Whittier Boulevard Specific Plan which itself became an issue in the elections.
The New Whittier Boulevard
First adopted in 2005, the Whittier Boulevard Specific Plan (WBSP) is the Council’s planning document for the Whittier Boulevard corridor. It constitutes their land use policy and zoning code for the properties in the WBSP’s planning area. Governing both uses and design standards, it divides the planning area into five districts stretching six miles from Broadway Avenue in the west to the Orange County Line in the east.
Most importantly, the Plan outlines a strategy of primarily reducing the land available for retail uses and increasing “housing opportunities.” This is a profound new vision for the Boulevard since it has traditionally been our primary commercial strip dominated by multiple car dealerships, shopping malls, restaurants, and retail stores since the 1950s. This new policy is most visibly expressed by the Plan’s Table 4-1 of Allowable Uses.
From this table, we see that Multi-Unit Residential Developments are permitted throughout all of the Plan’s five districts with or without a conditional use permit (CUP). In the Workplace district, you would think that land would be set aside exclusively for workplace uses, in other words commercial and industrial zones. On the contrary, residential developments are permitted in the Workplace Residential Subarea Overlay portion of that district. Therefore, the WBSP has turned the Boulevard into a playground for both residential and commercial developers alike.
Motel Drama
Lodging Facilities are permitted without a CUP only in the Center District, which extends from Strub Avenue east to Mills Avenue. In the Shopping Cluster and Neighborhood Spine districts, a new lodging facility requires a CUP. Therefore, the WBSP was an invitation to undiscerning motel developers. This is why the City received an application for a new motel last year, thereby upsetting many residents in the process.
Luckily, the WBSP is a functional part of the City’s municipal code, which gives the Council final discretion to approve or deny most commercial projects over 5,000 SF in floor area. Because many residents in the Center District were upset over the proposed motel, they successfully exerted enough political pressure on the Council, compelling them to deny the project with only one Council Member voting “yes.”
Therefore, the residents forced the Council majority to contradict their own problematic Specific Plan by denying approval, even though the Plan tells developers that motels are “ok.” Now, the motel developer is suing the City. To their credit, the Council even went a little further and adopted a moratorium on new motels but that is only a temporary fix. Since the Council clearly knows that Whittier residents don’t want any new motels, they should go even further and strike out lodging facilities from the WBSP to avoid any more of this motel drama.
New Housing Here and There
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the Southern California housing market bottomed in 2011. That same year, the Council approved amendments to the WBSP allowing housing even in the Workplace District. As prices rose, residential developers started working on new projects, thereby putting upward pressure on property values in the WBSP planning area. By 2015, the robust housing recovery put so much pressure on the Workplace District that the Council had to amend the Plan again. This time, the Council decided to cap the number of units in the District to 300.[ii]
The Council should be thanked for this cap as it will spare some industrial and commercial lands from meeting the fate of the former Interstate Home Services Corp site. A former industrial building located at 12452 Whittier Boulevard near Mar Vista was razed in order to build the 55 Amesbury Townhomes. These units were built by large home builder, D.R. Horton in 2016 and 2017.[iii] While the homes are attractive, they are in an industrial area surrounded by SoCal Gas’ Whittier Base, a used car dealership, and Mar Vista Wood Products, amongst other industrial sites. More significantly, the 3.5 acre property is no longer industrial and will probably be residential forever. Whittier already had a small industrial area and it’s just getting smaller.
Even more controversial are the 76 apartment units at Whittier Boulevard and Catalina; approved by the Council in 2014. As the project is finally nearing completion, we see that it’s architecturally good looking. However, at three stories high with a density of 40 units per acre, this project towers over the surrounding neighborhood on both sides of the Boulevard, as neighbors on Oak Street can see this building. Once completed, the new residents will begin their commutes by getting on to the Boulevard to head east or west at the same time that parents, buses, and pedestrian students are heading to East Whittier Middle School across the street. Many residents are concerned that this additional daily traffic poses a safety risk to students, especially pedestrians, so they protested this project but the Council went ahead and approved it anyways 4-0.[iv] The reality is that the Council almost has to approve these projects because they are consistent with the WBSP. If the Council uses its discretion to deny, they risk a lawsuit just as in the case of the motel.
Mike Sprague in his 2014 Whittier Daily News article quoted the following: “The architect did make some modifications,” said resident Kathy Orio. “But it’s still the wrong project in the wrong area. If it meets the code, then the code needs to be looked at. It’s in the wrong place.” This sums up the WBSP and its permitted projects beautifully. This apartment building is definitely out of place. Like the Amesbury townhomes, these apartments replaced a former place of business, the Whittier Mitsubishi Dealership. Two of my friends worked as salesmen there from 2002 to when it closed in 2008.
When the bottom dropped out of the economy, the dealership could no longer afford their Mitsubishi franchise license so it closed. However, the owner also owned the lot and wanted to re-open as a used car dealership. But the WBSP does not allow used dealerships so he was out of luck and sold the lot.[v] Therefore, the community lost a car dealership, and a dense multi-unit residential project across from their middle school was forced on them. This is what the WBSP does. It shifts land use on Whittier Boulevard from commercial or industrial to multi-unit residential.
As one big project has been finished and another is almost finished yet another has just begun construction. In 2014, the Council approved Whittier Park Place. Located at 14660 Whittier Boulevard, this project will have 50 units and stand up to 4 stories high. It’s adjacent to Anaconda Park, a single family residential neighborhood, and two strip malls. During the election, I communicated with a few voters in the neighborhood who were not happy with this and therefore supported Lizette Escobedo. Given the following 3-D rendering of the completed project with the surrounding neighborhood, it’s not hard to understand why. Once again, this new apartment complex is replacing a property that was commercially used as an overflow parking lot by the Toyota Dealership. No longer commercial, forever residential.
New is Not Always Better
The Whittier Boulevard Specific Plan’s new vision of residential use has changed the Boulevard’s nature. The new town homes and apartments are permanent. Those sites will never be commercial again. As a current resident, I see little if any benefit. Sure, those sites may have remained vacant and shuttered for quite some time before being developed, but good things come to those who wait. Had they remained zoned exclusively for commercial and or industrial use, they would have eventually been developed into new restaurants, offices, live-work units, mixed-use projects, self-storage facilities, warehouses, light manufacturing, or specialty stores. I enjoy dining in Whittier restaurants weekly, and I shop in our local stores almost weekly. As an Amazon seller, I used to rent office space when I had an employee, and I purchase inventory and supplies from local stores at least monthly. So I frequently benefit from Whittier’s commercial and industrial uses.
Furthermore, commercial uses provide multiple benefits. In addition to goods and services, they also provide sales tax revenue on top of property tax revenue. Their fiscal benefits cannot be understated. The City’s General Fund Revenues for 2017-2018 is budgeted at $61,466,321 and sales tax revenue is $10,049,500 or 16.3% of the total General Fund Revenues.[vi] This means that one out of six general fund dollars come from sales tax revenue generated by our Whittier businesses. And these businesses live in our precious commercial and industrial zones.
Then there are jobs. Our Whittier businesses provide jobs. And when those jobs are near our homes, more of us don’t have to commute to work. So the more local jobs, the better. I will expand on these benefits in forthcoming articles.
In stark contrast to commercial projects, residential developments, especially multifamily residential, do something very different: they expand our population. With these new dwelling units, I see new neighbors moving in and using the same existing roads, stores, restaurants, police force, fire department, parks, schools, car washes, etcetera that we are using. We may have to wait longer for a table at our favorite restaurant. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait longer for the police. These are the time, convenience, and safety costs of a larger population that concern me. As significant as these concerns are, there’s another.
There are financial costs. In graduate school, I learned that multifamily residential projects are fiscal losers because the costs of servicing them outweigh the tax and fee revenues they produce. Higher density equates to more demand for police, fire, water, roads, libraries, schools, parks, and sewer lines, amongst other municipal services. While development impact fees help mitigate the costs of these new residents on our public infrastructure and services, those fees probably won’t be enough to completely offset the new costs. I suspect this shift in land use and its fiscal impacts may account for at least a small percentage of the City’s forecasted budget deficits that begin next fiscal year, 2018-2019. In a future article, I will expand on these fiscal costs.
Of course, if I happen to meet a new neighbor who just moved into a new apartment or townhouse, I will be friendly because we live in Ye Friendly Towne. We are all neighbors and citizens of Whittier. But will the Council act to amend the WBSP? Only time will tell.
[ii] https://www.whittierdailynews.com/2015/07/29/whittier-city-council-approves-cap-on-new-homes-on-stretch-of-whittier-boulevard/
[iii] https://www.ocregister.com/2016/06/03/model-grand-opening-of-amesbury-in-whittier-saturday-june-4/
[iv] https://www.whittierdailynews.com/2014/04/23/whittier-city-council-approves-76-unit-apartment-complex/
[v] This information was provided by my friends who used to work there.
Comments are welcome. Please comment below.
Thanks for your comment, Patricia!
Very nicely done ! Informative and well written. Thank you !
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