Culver City Ballot Offers 2 Options on Development : Growth: A residents group is proposing a 56-foot height limit. The council’s plan would prohibit buildings from blocking views.

Both measures on Culver City’s ballot next week are designed to regulate development, but their similarity ends there.

The battle of the measures, like the parallel City Council race, pits slow-growth forces against pro-growth ones. Trust, numbers and visions of the future all figure prominently in the match.

And the contest is fierce because the two measures leave no room for each other. Should both measures pass next Tuesday, the one that gets the most votes will take effect. The winner will take the place of an interim ordinance, which expires on Election Day and limits building height to 58.5 feet.

Should both lose, the rules revert to those of the city’s Zoning Code, which has an absolute height limit of 167 feet--about 12 stories. It would be up to the new City Council to enact a new interim ordinance if it chooses.

Measure 1, the product of a residents petition drive, puts a height limit of 56 feet, or about four stories, on buildings in the city’s busiest commercial zones. Outraged by the construction of 12-story offices at Corporate Pointe in Fox Hills, slow-growth advocates collected more than 3,600 signatures in 1988 to qualify the measure for the ballot.

The zones specified include most of the commercial strips along Washington, Jefferson and Sepulveda boulevards, much of Fox Hills, and much of the downtown studio areas. These are the zones, according to Robin Turner, a sponsor of the initiative, that appear to be the most likely targets for high-rise development.

In response, the City Council in January unveiled Measure 2, which would impose lot-coverage limits on commercial buildings throughout the city. Without setting a specific height limit, it would prohibit such buildings from blocking views, disrupting air flow, or causing “significant detriment” by their shade, shadows, or glare. All developments would be required to mitigate traffic they create.

If the council proposal wins, the overall height limit would be the 167 feet specified in the Zoning Code.

The council majority of Jozelle Smith, Paul Jacobs and Richard Alexander voted to put Measure 2 on the ballot and wrote arguments in its favor and against Measure 1 in the Voter Information Pamphlet. Councilmen Steven Gourley and Jim Boulgarides have objected to the council measure, with Gourley calling it a “cynical attempt to blow smoke at the citizens.”

With Alexander retiring, incumbent Smith, who serves as mayor, and newcomers Mike Balkman and Tom Hammons are vying for two seats on the City Council. Smith and Balkman support Measure 2. Hammons argues that its aim is “primarily to kill Measure 1,” which he calls “the people’s choice.”

Measure 1 sponsor Turner agrees. The difference between the two measures is the “will of 3,600 people versus the will of three on the council,” she said at a recent election forum.

Turner contends that the three are particularly suspect because of their rush to approve the controversial Marina Place shopping mall before the election--before the citizens measure might throw up any hurdles. With Gourley and Boulgarides dissenting, the council last month approved an agreement with the mall’s developers in an effort to guarantee their right to build the $159-million project at the city’s western edge.

The project, which includes two department stores, more than 150 shops, a 74-foot-tall movie theater complex and two 84-foot decorative towers, would have to be redesigned if Measure 1 takes effect. The initiative would apply to all projects that have not started construction, Turner said.

(Measure 2 would exempt all projects that have received city approval and would thus impose no new limits on the Marina Place project.)

Measure 2 supporters discount the number of petition signers, saying that many people sign petitions but do not necessarily favor them. “It’s quite easy to support a petition when someone comes to your door,” Smith said at the election forum.

Citizens for Measure Two, in fact, distributed a letter last week in which about two dozen of the petition signers retracted their support for Measure 1. The letter was mailed to all of the petition signers, said Dorothy Harris, a chairwoman of Citizens for Measure Two and a planning commissioner.

Measure 1 backers contend that the City Council’s version gives the council too much discretion and has the potential to turn Culver City into a place where “you can hardly see the houses through the high-rises,” Turner said. “Who knows, 10 years down the road, what kind of council we’ll end up with.”

Harris, of the Measure 2 campaign, disagrees and points to the record. In the past decade, she said, the council has rejected a proposed 10-story office building on the Jefferson Bowl site and required Marina Place developers to scale down their project, she said.

The only projects taller than 56 feet approved in the past 10 years, Measure 2 backers note, are Marina Place, the Filmland Corporate Center in downtown Culver City, and Corporate Pointe in Fox Hills.

“I don’t think the council has anything to apologize about with regard to growth and development in the city,” Councilman Jacobs said. “The mood has been to be very, very careful about tall buildings.”

Turner argues that the record is at best one of mood swings. City leaders have turned down big developments only when confronted with large numbers of protesting residents, she said.

“This is why we need Measure 1,” Turner said. “We’re sick and tired of fighting them on every single thing, because it’s their opinion against the citizens’.”

Whether Measure 2 would substantially change the rules for developers is a matter of debate. Community Development Director Jody Hall-Esser said the combination of criteria spelled out in the measure would lead to more stringent requirements for buildings of more than 43 feet. But the Marina Place mall--which critics say will clog intersections, increase air pollution and restrict access to the coast--probably would have turned out the same under Measure 2, Jacobs said.

If Marina Place came up for approval under the terms specified in Measure 2, the councilman said, “I think you’d have the same, exact discussion. The majority of the council . . . would find there were ways to mitigate a portion of the traffic congestion.” The money the developer provides for traffic mitigation “would probably swing the balance toward approval of the project,” he said.

And, although a Citizens for Measure Two flyer argues that the measure “increases substantially the level of public scrutiny,” with public hearings required for proposed buildings of more than 43 feet, that already happens. Measure 2 would just add a requirement that the council make formal findings about a development’s effects before approving it, Jacobs acknowledged.

It would make the process “more formalized,” he said.

Asked if Measure 2 was put on the ballot in an effort to defeat Measure 1, Jacobs did not reply directly, but said the council-backed measure was put forth “to give people a better alternative.”

Measure 2, he said, is more comprehensive, in that it addresses not simply height, but related issues of growth, traffic and “what height does to our lives with glare, cutting out sunlight, (imposing) shade or shadow.”

Turner and Hammons, however, argue that those considerations are handled by strict setback, parking and other requirements that the city already has and that would not be disturbed by Measure 1. The citizens’ proposal, Hammons said, “limits the amount of people and traffic because the size of the building dictates that.”