Call to Action:
Support Airport2Park and the Great Park Coalition

Tomorrow: – This Tuesday, January 28th City Council will be reviewing the new Santa Monica Airport Conversion Project “Guiding Principles.” The City staff has compiled these principles from all the questionnaires that the community answered and from all of the public meetings. Along with our community and partners we are excited by the “Guiding Principles” as they clearly reaffirm the communities priority requesting a Great Park that “Starts with Nature” and is Measure LC compliant. The “Guiding Principles” are (in order): Start with Nature, Inspire Wonder, Balance Economics, Amplify Versatility, and Celebrate Place.

We are asking your support! Here is what you can do:

1. Send a brief email to the City Council showing your support for a “Guiding Principles” for a Great Park that is Measure LC compliant.

Send to:  councilmtgitems@santamonica.gov
Subject: Item 7.A. – Support for a Great Park and SMAC Project Guiding Principles

See section below on how to send your email:
See background information section below for Airport2Park and the Great Park Coalitions’s take on the staff report and suggested talking points

2 Attend the TUESDAY (January 28th) Council Meeting. Item 7.A. should be heard around 6:30pm but get there early to get a seat! This is historic and we need you there.

Sending an email:

For those of you writing an email to Council, we suggest you write your comments in your own words. You may if you wish choose to focus on the key points listed in the background information section below. A2P has not provided a template because Council naturally pays more attention to unique personal emails than they do to clones. We have provided a DRAFT Email below. Thank you in advance for taking the time to participate in this important Great Park milestone.

When writing a public comment email, for the email to become part of the permanent meeting record, please email Council no later than 11AM on Tuesday, January 28th. More information about submitting written comment can be found here.

The subject line of your email should detail what meeting item you are talking about (copy/paste the line below) viz:

Re: January 28, 2025 City Council Meeting – Item 7.A. – SMAC Project Guiding Principles

Either click here to begin an email to Council or address your email (copy/paste the email addresses below) to:
councilmtgitems@santamonica.gov, lana.negrete@santamonica.gov, caroline.torosis@santamonica.gov, jesse.zwick@santamonica.gov, ellis.raskin@santamonica.gov, barry.snell@santamonica.gov, natalya.zernitskaya@santamonica.gov, dan.hall@santamonica.gov, david.white@santamonica.gov

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DRAFT TEMPLATE – Please personalize and use your own voice.
Dear Mayor Negrete, Mayor Pro Tem Torosis, and Councilmembers:

[Brief information about yourself, why a Great Park is important to you]

The data gathered so far from the City’s SMAC Project process overwhelmingly supports the restoration of our City’s original Great Park on the land currently occupied by the Santa Monica Airport. Please support the proposed Guiding Principles and creation of a Great Park that is compliant with Measure LC, financially-feasible, publicly-owned, and can be opened for public use on Day One, January 1, 2029.

Thank you!
Sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]

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Background Information: (Aiport2Park)

Tuesday (Jan 28th) the “Guiding Principles” derived from the City’s outreach process will be presented to council to give guidance and directions to staff on the next phase of the Park Planning process, which is to prepare three possible park plans to bring back to the community and Council a few months later. One of these three plans will then be selected for full design in preparation for airport closure at the end of 2028. The meeting agenda can be found here. The park presentation is item 7 on the agenda and we anticipate it will start around 6:30. We encourage everyone to attend, you don’t necessarily have to speak as we have organized a slate of speakers, but it is important that we make a strong show of support at this first airport-related meeting for the new Council. A slate of speakers from Airport2Park and the Great Park Coalition (and its member organizations) will be presenting to Council at that meeting emphasizing the need for a fully LC-compliant Great Park. We also encourage you to submit an email under public comment (see below) in support of an LC-compliant Great Park.

Here is the link to the 48-page staff report on the outreach process and the results of the Guiding Principles phase, and here is the link to the associated City Attorney’s FAQ document relating to LC and airport closure. Both of these documents are worth reading if you need to catch up with the current state of the process. The following bullet points summarize A2P’s key takeaways from these documents:

The Guiding Principles as written in the staff report are strongly pro-park and aligned with what we had hoped to see. They are (in order): Start with Nature, Inspire Wonder, Balance Economics, Amplify Versatility, and Celebrate Place.  If you submit written comments, please encourage Council to adopt the guiding principles as written.

The results of the phase-2 survey are overwhelmingly in favor of a Great Park. Of the top 50 items people “want to see in the park”, fully 98.8% represent “common park uses”. Only one non-park use made an entry at #39 with 1.2%. The public overwhelmingly wants an LC compliant Great Park. We could not have asked for a better result.  If you submit written comments, please encourage Council to emphasize the need for a park that is fully LC compliant with an incremental buildout plan that begins with some form of public access on day 1. Please also emphasize that Council should not place any ballot measure to modify LC prior to closure. Doing so would likely draw a Measure D 2.0 from the national aviation lobby.

The public outreach process to date has been excellent and staff/Sasaki are bringing recommendations that are entirely aligned with what the public asked for.  You might want to let Council know that you appreciate how the process has been run.

Many of you have asked why certain uses were deemed non-LC compliant in the surveys. This is explained in detail in the City Attorney’s FAQ document. The good news is that the attorney also highlighted how make these incongruous “non-LC” “recreational uses” fully compliant without the need for a ballot measure to modify LC. The answer is by creating a unique zoning district for the area which clearly defines what is considered a “recreational use”. This has been done in the past elsewhere in the City, and Council could easily do so for the Great Park so removing these issues.  If you voted for any of the following uses: “Amphitheater (small/large), Cafe, Food hall/trucks, Farmers Market, Family Friendly Beer Garden, Restaurant, or Senior Center”, you may want to tell the Council to direct staff to create a unique zoning district for the airport site to clarify “recreational uses” and so avoid any need for a ballot measure to modify LC

The City Attorney also clarified that the decision to close the airport was definitively made in 2017 with Council resolution 11026. This is critically important because those currently echoing aviation lobby misinformation to the contrary need no longer be taken seriously. A2P’s long standing position has been that the matter of closure has already been decided and that the focus now should be entirely on park planning. We are very happy that the City Attorney has now definitively confirmed this fact.

There will likely be 3 scenarios to be studied, one of which may include housing. Do not be alarmed, this is as per the original instructions, and is advisable under the CEQA guidelines to ensure that the validity and completeness of the process is not subject to legal challenge.

Council is being asked to answer 4 questions at this stage, and you may want to express how you think they should answer. The questions are:

1. Does Council have any feedback on the Draft Guiding Principles before finalization?  The answer to this is NO as the guiding principles are excellent as written.

2. Does Council authorize staff to begin exploring the feasibility of three alternative scenario concepts for Phase 3, based on the draft Guiding Principles? This was the original instruction when the process stared.  The answer is YES, we want this multi-approach so that we can all see the tradeoffs (in money/time/park content) when we make the cut down to one.

3. Does Council authorize staff to explore the feasibility of the spectrum of community preferred land uses including one scenario that is consistent with Measure LC without a vote?  The answer to this is YES. In fact, given the solution to the “common park uses” issue detailed above, we would hope that two of the three approaches are fully LC compliant.

4. Does Council authorize staff to explore the feasibility of traditional and innovative financing structures and explore alternative organizational structures and/or partnerships to construct, operate, maintain, program, and manage the site?  Again the answer is YES, we want them to get creative with financing strategies and we want them to plan for an incremental park buildout that can be implemented in stages over time as financing can be arrange. This allows future flexibility and avoids having to accept a scaled-back park or undesirable park uses based purely on a doing-it-all-at-once planning/financing mindset.

Thank you for your involvement in this crucial community building issue.