Mailbag: Imagine the equivalent of a Walmart
Translating flat design drawings into how a final development project will feel, inside and out, is often challenging for clients.
As a design professional, I often search for similar size structures to help convey the size, mass and scale of the finished project. When friends asked about the size of the proposed parking structure at the Village Entrance, I crunched some numbers and looked for something similar. Here’s what I came up with:
The Village Entrance parking structure would be 47,000 square feet x 36 feet tall = 1,692,000 cubic feet.
An average Walmart is 75,000 square feet x 22 feet tall = 1,650,000 cubic feet.
So, the parking structure would be about the same size volume as a Walmart, only 14 feet taller. Just imagine taking the back third of a Walmart off and placing it on top, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the mass and scale of what is being proposed.
If anyone is interested, the City Council is asking for public input for improving the Village Entrance Project. A workshop is set for 6 p .m. Nov. 12 in council chambers.
Chris Prelitz
Laguna Beach
*
Residents don’t oppose live-work
Part of me wants to scold columnist Dave Hansen for his “Breaking Bad” description of my neighborhood in a recent column (“Live and let live-work,” Coastline, Oct. 11). Instead, I’ll just comment on some of the issues his column raised.
As for the “Breaking Bad” reference, it’s not like we have meth labs or shooting ranges, and the site Hansen describes with rusting cars and cow rugs is in fact owned by the project-proposing developer/artist. To improve this appearance by replacing his dusty lot and cowhide-selling “little swap meet” with a 30-unit complex, however, seems an extreme pendulum swing in the wrong direction.
It’s misleading to say seven years have been spent developing the project as if it’s always been 30 units. When first presented in 2011, it was five to eight units and we didn’t object.
Then after the 2011 moratorium on new artist live-work and a change in definition to artist work-live by the city, plus the inclusion of affordable housing and other requirements, the project went from eight to 30. So, somehow, once the moratorium ended and the city got involved with a new artist work-live ordinance, it got so big and unwieldy as to be unacceptable to our association.
To say the traffic study, including trips to the grocery store, is somehow the wrong way to calculate traffic, though, puts too much weight on the vague “no commute to work” concept. Those 30 people are going to generate traffic going to the grocery and supply stores, schools, theaters, beach and many other places.
To compare to “Breaking Bad,” our crime rate, which used to be negligent, has gone up since the homeless center went in. And typically, crime is higher around apartments because of their transient renter population.
The whole “if this doesn’t get approved nothing will” is misleading. Maybe if 30 doesn’t get approved, seven or eight would have. And if this does, what’s to stop every M1-B (light Industrial, commercial or residential zoned) property owner from trying to duplicate it?
There isn’t a lack of appreciation for the live-work model. There’s a lack of appreciation for a 30-unit dorm-size project and the fear that it won’t be overseen properly.
Managing 30 units is a full-time job — add to that overseeing the kiln, foundry, oven, materials and storage, and it’s potentially unmanageable.
And finally, to say he’s not going to make money with 30 units at $800 each seems suspect. That’s $24,000 a month, or close to $300,000 per year.
Developers who promise more than is realistic to get a project through aren’t unknown in Orange County. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We don’t want to be stuck with a boondoggle.
My neighbors and I, we’re working-class Laguna and we worked hard to be able to live here. Just because a developer overpaid for a dusty lot doesn’t give him and a group of investors the right to forever change our neighborhood from rural to urban.
We worked hard to create what we have, just as hard as an artist works the canvas.
Be careful before painting such a generalized view of our neighborhood and siding with the proposal for a big development over the existing residents’ desire for a small-scale one.
John Albritton
Laguna Beach