Palos Verdes Peninsula News
Thursday, September 11, 2008
by Chris Boyd 

Officials to developer: Keep working

Silver Center is far from reality as city representatives express many concerns with project.


Developer Amir Ohebsion wants to construct a three-story, 19,745-square-foot mixed-use retail and medical office building at 449 Silver Spur Road, the former site of Charlie’s Automotive in Rolling Hills Estates. As currently designed, the project would include a three-level underground parking structure.

RHE — City Council members and planning commissioners sent a potential developer back to the drawing board after he presented plans for Silver Center to both Rolling Hills Estates bodies during a Tuesday night meeting.

“You really don’t understand the Hill,” Planning Commissioner Tim Scott told developer Amir Ohebsion late in the proceedings.

At issue were both a three-level underground parking structure and the massiveness of Silver Center, a proposed three-story, 19,745-square-foot mixed-use retail and medical office building at 449 Silver Spur Road, the former site of Charlie’s Automotive and a Unocal 76 gas station. Actually, the development would consist of two structures divided by a courtyard.

Charlie Webster still owns the 18,400-square-foot lot at the corner of Silver Spur and Crossfield Drive.

“It is no good for us to build a project that just doesn’t work in our city,” said Mayor Frank Zerunyan. “I would encourage you to study our city a little bit more. In a lot of places it’s a wonderful project, but in our city you’re going to need to work a little bit more.

“The massing of those two buildings is substantial,” he added. “The project needs to step back [from the street] all the way through, as opposed to [at just] one level.”

Zerunyan encouraged Ohebsion and his architect to study Silverdes, a three-story, 12,492-square-foot combined medical office, condominium and retail building with two levels of underground parking proposed at the site of the former Arco gas station on Little Silver Spur Road.

“Silver Center actually is in a scenic corridor,” said Councilman Steve Zuckerman. “There’s a limit to how many [three-story buildings] the community can tolerate.

“The cost of your parking is extremely high,” he added.

‘Not a box’

Though city code requires 81 parking spaces for a development the size of Silver Center, the applicant proposes 112 spaces in three levels of underground parking.

In addition to 31 extra spaces, the developer plans a 48-foot-high circular tower at the corner of Crossfield and Silver Spur — the tower exceeds the city’s height limit by 4 feet.

“[The tower] doesn’t give that sense of monumentality to the building,” said architect Hamid Gabbay of Gabbay Architects. “It makes it softer … [This building] is not a box. It has a lot of modulation, and we answered the call from staff to address that.”

“There is a way to do this,” Zerunyan said. “I don’t want to design your project for you, but we don’t have a circular tower in the city.”

According to Gabbay, the project would be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certified, meaning the structure would follow guidelines that make it more energy-efficient. Gabbay plans to cover 20 percent of the property with landscaping.

While there is no residential development planned for the site, the developer envisions three retail stores on the ground level, with medical offices taking up the remaining space.

Councilwoman Judy Mitchell asked what kinds of businesses would occupy the first floor.

“I don’t know,” Gabbay said, adding that a couple of merchants expressed interest initially. “Unfortunately, this process has been so long [that it’s tough to attract tenants].”

“It’s just very hard to say where we’ll end up, leasing wise, at this point,” Ohebsion said.

Mitchell further questioned the tower height.

“The building looks a lot better if [the tower] is slightly above the rest of it,” Gabbay said. “I pushed that, to be honest with you, and it’s only from an architectural point of view.”

“The tower is quite prominently out in front of the building,” said Planning Commissioner Scott.

Councilwoman Susan Seamans said she couldn’t imagine Peninsula residents being comfortable parking in a structure that is three levels underground.

“It seems to me the elephant in the room is the parking,” Seamans said. “I think they’re overstretching and overoptimistic about people using the property. We don’t want to crowbar huge masses of space [there].”

Gabbay said the applicant plans to ask tenants to park on the lower levels, leaving the upper levels open for customers and patients. “If we eliminate that [third level of parking], it’s not going to make a lot of difference,” he said.

Though Gabbay insisted the building was not imposing, Planning Commissioner Judith Bayer said the structure was “so stark and not inviting at all.”

Zuckerman said he couldn’t envision people navigating through and parking in a subterranean structure just to get a cup of coffee, but he added that those who are visiting medical offices would park for an extended time.

“This is not a metropolitan area,” Zuckerman said. “The sole dependence on underground parking is pretty untested … This looks very much like a building that would be wildly successful in an area like Hollywood where people are used to subterranean parking.”

Said Ohebsion, “Unfortunately, it’s a very small footprint we have.”   

 

 

 

 
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