A Community Member’s View of the Draft Land Use Element

Many readers know that the City of Glendale has issued drafts of Land Use, Environmental Justice and Mobility Elements. These drafts contain major changes to the City’s previous General Plan and residents should familiarize themselves with these drafts and submit comments. Meanwhile, City staff members tout their community engagement efforts. They include their presence at events such as Cruise Night and farmers’ markets as community outreach. However, many attendees at these events do not reside in Glendale. Therefore, this is not legitimate outreach to the Glendale community. In fact, City staff received only 248 responses to their Environmental Justice survey. Glendale’s population is over 180,000 people. Two hundred and forty eight is far too few responses to take seriously as representative of the community.

Additionally, City staff characterize community opposition to portions of the draft elements as fueled by “inaccurate information” and attempt to pacify the public with statements which, although true in a strictly technical sense, do not actually offer the reassurances sought by Glendale residents and stakeholders. For example, the City proposes “COROs” (an acronym for City-owned residential overlay) for three lots on Verdugo and Canada Blvd., near St. Gregory Armenian Church and the Civic Auditorium, for another lot a bit further up on Canada Blvd., which is the location of the historic Verdugo Woodlands Dads Club, as well as for three parking lots in Montrose that sit directly behind the Montrose shopping business establishments on the north side of Honolulu Avenue. They claim that they are not changing the zoning of the lots on Verdugo near the Civic Auditorium, which are currently zoned as special recreation/open space. But if you construct multifamily residential housing on those parcels, that zoning becomes irrelevant.

Another blithe reassurance offered is that they are not “planning” to put any projects on these parcels. This reassurance has no significance at ground level since the City designated the seven properties mentioned above as well as nine other properties, including parking lots that are essential to patrons shopping or dining at such cornerstones of downtown Glendale as Porto’s Bakery, Raffi’s Place and the Museum of Neon Art as “surplus land.” This designation places these properties on lists that are readily available to developers seeking property on which to build high density residential or other projects. It is considered the first step in disposing of City-owned properties.

City officials and staff assert that the COROs and other unwelcome provisions of this draft Land Use Element protect the City from more aggressive tactics by the state with respect to meeting required residential housing construction. However, it seems that such draconian action by the state would only occur if the City failed to file a housing element or committed other egregious offenses. The City of Glendale is in compliance with the California Dept. of Housing and Community Development (https://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-open-data-tools/housing-element-review-compliance-report) and has timely filed its related reports. 

Second, I could find no instance of the state forcing any cities into receivership or litigating against the cities, except in cases of complete non-compliance. Glendale has met its regional housing needs assessment (“RHNA”) for the 2021-2029 housing cycle without needing any zoning changes. Our City is very unlikely to be targeted by the state.

And Glendale’s population has not grown dramatically over the past 30 years. In fact, Glendale’s approximate population was 190,000 in 1990, grew to 195,000 in 2000, dropped back to 192,000 in 2010 and peaked at 196,000 in 2020 before dropping to a projected 181,000 in 2025. Per the Southern California Association of Government (SCAG) April 2021 report, Glendale’s housing stock is 61.2% multi-family and 38.8% single-family. This contrasts with 34.8% multi-family and 61.6% single-family in SCAG’s overall area. Glendale is already much denser than the overall SCAG region.

Finally, many Californians throughout the state object to what is overreach by the state regarding construction of housing. It’s one thing to require that local agencies construct a specified number of units, where and how they deem appropriate, and it’s quite another thing to dictate that local laws shall be disregarded in managing local land use. Our state legislature is doing the latter with recent bills such as SB 9, SB 10 and the latest, SB 79. This latest bill even disregards protections in historic districts and is opposed vigorously by the City of Los Angeles and numerous other cities. 

Shouldn’t Glendale as the fourth largest city in the County play an active role in resisting along with other smaller cities instead of downplaying and resisting the desires and opinions of its own residents?

Susan Wolfson
Glendale