April 7, 2022

Gelson's Project Fails to Meet Planning Requirements

Yesterday, SMCLC served objections to the completeness of the application filed by SanMon, Inc. for the massive project at 2601 Lincoln and Ocean Park Boulevards (Gelson’s site). At nearly 900,000 sq ft, it would be almost 60% larger than Santa Monica Place.

It’s remarkable that this developer - who wants to build 12 buildings of various heights and sizes - has submitted preliminary plans without basic information required by the application.

“Any homeowner who has tried to remodel in this City is aware of the exacting requirements of the Planning Department. This developer should be held to the same standards,” said SMCLC’s attorney, Beverly Grossman Palmer, a partner at the law firm of Strumwasser & Woocher and also a resident of Santa Monica.

Before moving on to any approval process, the City first has an obligation to review the application for compliance with its code requirements.

SMCLC and its legal counsel have reviewed the application and identified key requirements that are missing, including:

Treating the project as one massive building, instead of twelve individual buildings with separate building elevations for each;

Failing to provide any elevations of existing adjacent buildings along Hill Place North and 10th Court;

Failing to provide fully dimensional floor plans for each of the 12 buildings;

Failing to show the methodology for calculating the height and natural grade;

Failing to show the sizes of exterior mechanical equipment; and

Failing to include responses to the questions and comments from the community meeting This is just the beginning. Once the City deems the application complete, we’ll move on to the next phase - whether this project complies with the law.


In the meantime, please forward this email to friends and neighbors who are interested in this project. There were over 500 people on the community meeting ZOOM but as of yet the developer has not provided those emails to the City for the public record. The City has not even disclosed if it has requested them.

Thank you for joining with us to get a better project on this massive site in the Ocean and Sunset Park neighborhoods.

Click Here to read the SMCLC Letter

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SMCLC