Downtown growth effects up in the air
The Los Angeles City Council decided to sell developers up to 9 million square feet of extra floor space for downtown condominiums and apartments without first analyzing how the extra growth would affect traffic, sewers and other public services.
Developers who purchase the "air rights" for unused space above the Convention Center and transfer them to their own projects could build structures significantly taller than current zoning codes allow. But city officials said they did not study where the extra-tall buildings would be located or even how many people they would bring downtown.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents downtown, said she doesn't think such planning is needed, because the downtown general plan already accounts for the density.
But several top outside planners expressed concern that L.A. would allow so much additional development -- roughly the equivalent of Century City -- without assessing the effects.
"There's no vision or larger plan about where to put high-density corridors, or what is going to be the impact of this density on traffic," said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chairwoman of UCLA's urban planning department.
Steven P. Erie, director of the Urban Studies Program at UC San Diego, said the city's projections for sewer, transportation, public safety and other needs would have to change to accommodate the crush of people in a small area that would result from the construction of very high condominium or apartment towers.
Using a rule of thumb of 1,200 square feet per apartment, the 9 million square feet of allowable air transfer rights could result in about 7,500 units. That means 15,000 people could be concentrated in a few buildings.
Using the city's guidelines for assessing sewer needs, the addition of 15,000 residents would require enough capacity to move 1.35 million more gallons of water and waste each day.
City officials hope to raise $200 million by selling the unused rights above the Convention Center, which is zoned for high-rise construction but is only a few stories tall.
Los Angeles Planning Director Gail Goldberg said she was confident that the needs of a denser downtown were already considered in the area's general plan and that any extra building won't cause major problems.
Part of the reason to sell the air rights in the first place is to raise funds that would be used to make downtown more appealing as a place to live, she said.
