When the West Hollywood City Council approved an appeal for an apartment project at 910-916 Wetherly Drive last month, the only dissenting vote came from City Council member Lauren Meister. She said she opposed the project because she had concerns. Here, as a guest columnist, are her thoughts:
I believed that we could vote for the appeal “in part” — meaning we could vote for some aspects of the appeal without necessarily denying the project.
Given that the project is located near an earthquake fault, I felt there should have been additional environmental study focused on hydrology. As the project includes three levels of subterranean parking, a lot of soil will be removed and the surrounding ground could be destabilized. If dewatering becomes necessary, there is the potential for subsidence. City staff was unaware that there might be dewatering – we only learned of it because I asked the question.
I also felt there should be a shade/shadow study since the building was so tall compared to neighboring buildings. The neighbors in the north and the east are going to lose natural light, which could impact energy consumption and the ability to incorporate solar power. The church, located to the south and which is a historic resource, might also be impacted.
I also questioned the concession to allow non-residential use of the subterranean garage (i.e., those visiting the church). According to state law, a concession is supposed to “result in identifiable and actual cost reductions consistent with what’s contemplated by State Density Bonus Law.” I think approval of that concession was a stretch. Further, the traffic impacts of this concession were not studied, which means, neither were potential mitigations. That’s not planning.
Lastly, I felt that granting the three 10% modifications, which were discretionary, was unnecessary. The project’s architect knew about the earthquake fault when they designed the project. Incorporating the discretionary modifications into the plans, along with 3 concessions and a height and density bonus, was taking advantage and seriously dismissing the concerns of the neighbors
I think the project could have been a better project with one less story. The developer could have removed the seventh story by moving the one residential unit (basically a penthouse for the manager) and the laundry room, and incorporated them into the lower floors. They may have lost 3 or 4 units out of the 89, but the City anticipated there might be less units when it signed the $10 million loan agreement. The rooftop could have been used entirely for open space and/or a green roof — a quiet respite for an extremely dense project. Let’s not forget that one of the other concessions the developer was granted was a 26% reduction in required open space area. That’s a major loss for the future residents of that project.
There were two LA far east side state senators in the 1970s and 1980s who were just horrible when it came to interviewing them or getting much cooperation from them. One was Garcia the other was Montoya, whose first name escapes me at the moment.
I’ll tell you a hilarious story about Montoya.
In May of 1993, during my second day at Boron, the federal prison camp to which I was sentenced, I went to a late lunch where I saw it off to myself. I was cold, tired and trying not to get down on myself when a short, stocky middle-aged guy wearing glasses sat down across from me with his food tray.
“Goddamn, Castro, I knew you were determined to interview me, but I didn’t know you would go to these lengths.”
It caught me by surprise. I didn’t know anyone at the camp. I Took another look at the guy. Dammit if it wasn’t Senator Montoya. I’d forgotten he got caught up on some bribery or another. I had never spoken to him, and had always dealt with his chief of staff or spokesperson. But now here we were face-to-face, and we broke out laughing.
Montoya was a great connection to have at Boron. He literally ran the place. He asked if I had already been assigned to a job. I told him I had. I had been assigned to a cleanup crew. And even though it was May, it was cold and windy up in that area, and I had almost frozen my ass working that morning.
“Well, how would you like to teach English instead?”
And he was serious. Somehow he had become friends with the head of education at the prison, and he said they needed someone to help teach GED English to the inmates, and specifically someone who could help get them to do well in the written portion of the GED testing.
What can I tell you? Good afternoon I was taken outside cleanup duty and assigned to the education department where Montoya’s buddy arranged for me to teach GED, English, and writing to morning classes of inmates.
Boron had been a white collar crime club fed facility for several years but it had begun to also house nonviolent drug offenders who were nearing the end of their sentences. And many of these inmates chose to take classes in the mornings instead of working at a job. They found it amusing that they now had a teacher who was a real writer who was a real writer who had gotten himself into trouble. It was a hell of a way to connect with your students.
When Montoya’s buddy learned that I had played tennis in high school, and even for a couple of years in college, he arranged for me to teach tennis in the afternoon to wives and children of the staff and guards at the prison. Boron was an extremely low security facility with no fences or walls and where the trusted inmates were allowed to empire Little League games there in the community as well as to serve as fireman in the Boron fire department. The facility had previously been dormitories for officers from the nearby Air Force Base. The staff and officer housing were like a planned community. There were two hardcourt tennis courts, a huge swimming pool, a softball field, a touch football field, basketball courts and two different running tracks. So I would teach school in the morning and either teach or play tennis in the afternoon, depending on who was there that day to teach. In its own way, it was like being at camp.
And it was quite clubby. Especially the dormitories. There was a Latino dorm. A black dorm. A Native American dorm. An Italian dorm. And you had to apply for these. I was turned down at the Latino dorm for not being Latino enough. Actually, the first day I was there, I was told not to bother trying to get into any of these dorms, because I was a writer and journalist, and they would all be suspicious, especially since I was only a short termer. So Montoya got me placed into his dorm made up of political and government offenders, such as politicians, judges, and bureaucrats.
LAUREN MEISTER was elected to the West Hollywood City Council on March 3, 2015; re-elected for her second term on March 5, 2019; and re-elected for her third term on November 8, 2022.
JEROME CLEARY is a columnist for LAMonthly.org and for the LA Independent. Jerome lives in West Hollywood and has been named a Local Hero of West Hollywood by LA Weekly. He can be reached at jeromecleary@aol.com.
