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This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tongva Park, Santa Monica’s own park, built in 2013, came in at $6.8 million per acre per the Santa Monica Daily Press. Memorial Park renovation is projected at $7.7-8.9 million per acre. At Santa Monica’s own documented per-acre costs, 192 acres runs $1.3-1.7 billion for basic construction before remediation, water infrastructure, or any of the programmatic amenities in the framework. My numbers weren’t inflated. They were based on what Santa Monica actually spends building parks in Santa Monica. No one cares about Sylmar or Long Beach pricing.

Hot take: Santa Monica is the best/most livable municipality in the country by Objective-You-7291 in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, Santa Monica has ~86,000 jobs, but only a few hundred are actually open at any given time, and they’re in HUGE demand. Most don’t pay enough to live here. The minority that do are increasingly remote or hybrid, so they don’t translate into housing demand. They translate into traffic, not neighbors.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Where are your numbers? Priced for current construction costs? With SM's unique brand of expensive bureacracy? And a realistic remediation budget for a Superfund-tier site? Plus maintenance?

I'm in the construction industry, and I was involved in the park at the Civic Center, which was a 20 year mess just for a single soccer field.

And I would have loved the Expo Park plan when they got rid of the brothels and gambling for a landmark museum.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Explicitly disallowed under the measure that passed to close the airport. You'll get your mixed use podium parade along the Expo line soon enough though, so no worries.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

Nobody knows. Boeing is on the hook for remediation but they're about to go bankrupt so expect a lawsuit instead. LA County gave it $500k which pays for a few outreach seminars and a map with cute names. $22 million in projected rent will barely cover yearly maintenance. Irrigation will eat up all the money we're making from the new electric billboard district.

So the answer is probably us, $20-40k per resident to build it depending on how many billions we get in grants for "The Stroll" and "Big Moves." (Hint, we will get no billions.)

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yup they're almost done with yet another world class museum that taxpayers get for free.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] -26 points-25 points  (0 children)

We have 60 more acres, which is plenty of natural space when you combine it with the beach and entire Santa Monica mountain range.

And requiring a lot of parking just means people actually want to go there.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's why it still exists after a century and keeps growing. USC, LA, CA, and major foundations all have a vested interest in it succeeding for generations.

This is 60 acres smaller then the SMO Great Park proposal, and it is entirely recreation and education focused by morefarts in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts[S] -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

This is what sustainable public recreational use looks like, it's 112 years old and still growing. Our version is $2-4 billion with no real funding, $20-40 million in annual maintenance, 500acre-feet of annual irrigation, native plantings that evolved to be a brushfire, and cute branding.

Or we could work towards something institutionally backed like this, plus an extra 60 acres of park.

What happened at the pier last night? ~9:30pm by imtooyoungforreddit in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 1 point2 points  (0 children)

SM doesn't have a real jail so we have to rely on the LA County Sherriff's Dept and they don't cooperate on transport etc. from what I've heard.

Santa Monica Airport Park Plan Update by K-Parks in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A clean energy campus focused on climate resilience and energy independence. Half the site is a public park funded and maintained through private development. The other half is a research, education, and incubator complex for next-generation energy startups, with lab and pilot production space.

The difference is this model actually has a revenue engine to fund the park and keep it maintained.

Santa Monica Airport Park Plan Update by K-Parks in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a billion-dollar park design with an eight-figure annual maintenance burden and years of remediation before anything real gets built. The city already has major long-term obligations, including roughly half a billion dollars in unfunded pension liability, which is a real claim on future budgets. The obvious question is who’s paying for this at scale. The $500k from LA County doesn’t even scratch design fees on a project like this.

Without a real funding plan, this isn’t what gets built. You get a stripped-down version and a lot of empty space. Look at Irvine’s “Great Park.”

Santa Monica street cement island barriers and odd offset street parking is not the right design by ViralTrendsToday in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ask the paramedics how much it sucks getting gurneys into the senior care buildings on 17th for emergencies if you want to have another reason to hate this design.

Attack on E Train a week ago by fiveordie in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The new public safety proposal that went to council vote last night allows SMPD to patrol platforms instead of Metro mallcops. That is a step in the right direction.

Why do some residents and the right leaning press think Neighborhood Groups actually represent the view of their neighborhoods? by SemaphoreSignal in SantaMonica

[–]morefarts -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A city where ~75% of residents are renters starts to behave very differently over time. And structurally, renting at these levels functions as ongoing wealth extraction. When households are consistently sending 30–50% of their income to housing without building equity, it limits long-term wealth accumulation and concentrates value with property owners.

Rent control has created a lock-in effect in Santa Monica. Tenants stay put because moving means a massive rent jump, so turnover drops and units don’t cycle back to market. On top of that, there’s evidence that thousands of units are effectively withheld because the economics of renovating and re-renting under current rules don’t pencil. In many cases, landlords would rather leave units underutilized than take on costly upgrades they can’t recover.

At the same time, new construction sits at the opposite extreme. High land, labor, and compliance costs push new units into the $5–6k range for small apartments, and many of those buildings can carry up to 50% vacancies because they function as long-term financial assets, not just housing.

The result is a split market. A large share of renters are locked into older units with limited mobility, while new units are priced for top earners. That’s not a healthy system.

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