Active Projects

Fox Studio Expansion Project Century City

Details

Action related to the ill-conceived 2377 Midvale so-called “low-barrier homeless shelter” in a single-family neighborhood.

  • Updated trial briefs/documents as of 11/25/24
  • Removal of parking critical to local small business.
  • Violation of the Exposition Specific Plan.
  • Violation of the Westwood/Pico Neighborhood Oriented District.
  • Violation of mayoral Executive Directives.
  • Violation of competitive bidding laws.
Details
  • Various actions relating to a flawed new law (LAAC 8.33) which allows for near unchecked power and uncontrolled abuse of an expired emergency declaration to conduct secret negotiations, award projects without competitive bidding  and evade existing land use laws.
  • Use of emergency declarations for chronic issues deprives the public of clear and consistent rules governing both public and private sector development, transparent governance and due process rights.
Details

FTC is actively monitoring the “Fox Forward” plan.  Key issues will be exceeding allowable “Trips” and development rights under the existing Specific Plan, increase first-responder demand and impacts on traffic along Olympic Blvd.

Infrastructure

FTC seeks to ensure that the type, amount, and location of development be correlated with the provision of adequate supporting infrastructure and services.

Fixing The City

FTC has funded projects that literally fix the city including lane delineators that have reduced accidents on Olympic Boulevard near Century City.

Community Benefits

FTC settlements have provided resources for local schools, parks, libraries, police and firefighters as well as provide for neighborhood beautification.

LAFD Response Times

Details

Building on FTC’s ground-breaking statistical work in 2012 proving reported LAFD response times were flawed, FTC continues push for first responder resources which correspond to the increasing demand for services.

Completed Projects

Hollywood Community Plan

Details

FTC prevailed in its lawsuit to stop a flawed community plan from being implemented.  The City has submitted a new plan that has the same flaws and also seeks, per City documents to “overrule and supersede” the courts ruling.

Malcolm/Glendon Project, Flawed Earthquake Fault Study, Resident Notification of Fault

Details
  • FTC filed a Building and Safety Appeal to force compliance with the Alquist-Priolo Act.  The City denied the appeal.  FTC then took the case to court and won new testing.  The eastern building is built over a known fault trace and the western building had no seismic study at all and shows a mapped fault trace running through the property.

10400 Santa Monica, Flawed Earthquake Fault Testing, Earthquake Safety, TOC

Details
  • An action and ongoing effort to enforce Measure JJJ’s requirement for affordable housing AND good jobs.  The bargain with voters was affordable housing AND good jobs in exchange for larger buildings.  The City is not enforcing the requirement of good jobs.  Also focuses on first-responders, building on or near earthquake faults.

Expo Overlay Zone

Details

FTC filed suit concerning increases in allowable density under the Expo Specific Plan given that police & fire response times are inadequate (despite their best efforts).  The trial court ruling has been appealed.

Details

FTC has won a petition for writ of mandate challenging the net loss of affordable units and compliance with the Westwood Multi-Family Specific Plan.  Key finding:  TOC does not have “the force of law.”

Pico/Olympic One-Way

Details

FTC members led the fight to challenge the ill-conceived proposal to make Pico and Olympic one-way which would have created massive cut-through traffic in local neighborhoods.

Motion Picture Academy Museum

Details

FTC successfully worked with the Academy to address traffic, advertising and noise impacts.

SB 1818

Details

FTC members successfully built a coalition of neighborhood groups and challenged the City’s over-generous interpretation of the density bonus law that had little to do with affordable housing and far more to do with uncontrolled development.

Casden Project

Details

FTC worked with a broad coalition and the council office to challenge the Casden Project at Pico/Sepulveda in its originally proposed form on the basis of traffic and other impacts.

Catalina Project

Details

An action to force the city to adhere to its own rules, laws and procedures for project approvals and general plan amendments as well as requiring consistency with the community and general plan.

Details

An action designed to address public safety issues, require consistency with the community plan, require consistency with the general plan and to enforce an undisclosed covenant.

Mobility Plan 2035

Details

FTC’s first successful challenge of the Mobility Plan resulted in the council rescinding and then re-adopting the Mobility Plan.  FTC then reached a settlement with the City that addressed before/after first-responder response time measurements, project transparency and defined minimum outreach.

2301 Westwood Blvd/TOC

Details

Fix The City successfully challenged this TOC project which, among other things, violates transitional height requirements.  FTC also has general plan consistency issues and finally believes, based on city data, that insufficient first-responder resources exist in the areas.

The project was abandoned after the FTC lawsuit.

Quimby Funds

FTC worked with CD5 to ensure that the local councilperson must approve transfers of Quimby Funds out of their district.  Quimby funds are generated from residential development for park capital costs.

LACMA/Parking

Details

While FTC does not oppose the LACMA expansion, it is very concerned that a failure to mitigate subway parking demand will result in reduced patron parking and increased neighborhood parking intrusion.

Short-Term Rentals, Restricted Units, Replacement Units

FTC is researching the impact that short-term rentals have on the amount of housing units in the City, with an emphasis on affordable housing.  This effort also includes the loss of rent-restricted units to TOC and other density bonuses.  The previously existing rent controlled units are not being replaced.

Bellwood Senior Living

Details

192 senior housing residential units; 50,463 square feet of indoor common areas and 14,630 square feet of outdoor common areas. The proposed uses would be located within a single building ranging in height from 38 feet to 70 feet, or three to six stories. A total of 140 vehicle parking spaces would be provided within two subterranean levels beneath the proposed building.

Project abandoned unrelated to FTC actions.

Resources

About Fix The City

All FTC board members are unpaid volunteers.  Each board member is unapologetically proud of supporting public safety, supporting the infrastructure and working to make the city a better place.  Community activism is a contact sport. Lawsuits happen.  Attacks on us and our work happen. We understand this.  We accept this.  We don’t enjoy it, but it unfortunately comes with the territory.

FTC is not a slow-growth group nor is it an anti-development group.  FTC is a pro-public safety, pro-livability, pro-“rules-matter” group.  FTC believes that the prosperity of cities depends upon their livability:  Good schools, safe parks, properly staffed police and fire, gridlock-free, non-cratered streets, clean air and safe sidewalks.  In Los Angeles these vital public services are suffering in large part because the City has failed to monitor and invest in its crumbling infrastructure and has allowed development to outpace and exceed its capacity to provide essential services.   The City developed a policy to deal with this precise problem:

“The policy requires that type, amount, and location of development be correlated with the provision of adequate supporting infrastructure and services.”

This is not our policy.  This is a policy created and then promptly ignored by many in the City.  The City got it right two decades ago when they predicted problems if their policy was not implemented.  They touted it as “mitigation through framework policy.”  What we face now is literally an unmitigated disaster.

A few more quotes from the City on its policy(cites to follow on the new website):

  • “What became clear was that a crucial feature of dealing with growth impacts was contained in the General Plan Framework – its program for timing allowable development with available infrastructure…”
  • “…if this monitoring finds that population in the Plan area is occurring faster than projected; and, that infrastructure resource capacities are threatened, particularly critical ones such as water and sewerage; and, that there is not a clear commitment to at least begin the necessary improvements within twelve months; then building controls should be put into effect, for all or portions of the [West Los Angeles Community], until land use designations for the Community Plan and corresponding zoning are revised to limit development.”
  • The new General Plan is to be used “so that allowable increases in density … would not occur until infrastructure and its funding was available.”
  • “This policy also directs determinations of the level of growth that should correlate with the level of capital, facility or service improvement that are necessary to accommodate that level of growth.”
  • The General Plan Framework “was particularly helpful because it informed the City that a triggering mechanism should be included so that allowable increases in density through community plan amendments would not occur until infrastructure and its funding was available.”

The mechanism designed by the City to prevent precisely the types of failures we are now seeing has never been implemented as promised.  Water main breaks, cuts in fire services, gridlocked traffic, deteriorating streets and broken sidewalks are testimony to both the wisdom of planners in 1996 and the shortsightedness of all those who have ignored the requirements set forth in the General Plan since.

FTC was established as an unincorporated entity in 2007 and incorporated in 2012 to promote public safety, support the infrastructure, challenge unsustainable development and to hold city government accountable, especially with regard to land-use issues.

Fix The City does not support or oppose candidates or initiatives.

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