Palos Verdes Peninsula News
Thursday, June 26, 2008
by Rebecca Villaneda 

Chalk one up for the Mediterranean Village

RHE — The proposed Mediterranean Village project came one step closer to fruition when Rolling Hills Estates City Council voted 3-2 to adopt the Mitigated Negative Declaration, a report stating the project will not significantly affect the environment.

Council members Steve Zuckerman and John Addleman dissented.

The site for the project’s 75-unit condominium complex is located at 927 Deep Valley Drive, currently a medical building located on the south side of the street behind Bristol Farms.

Peninsula resident Ted Wynne heads the project.

Adopting the MND wasn’t easy as Zuckerman posed significant questions and concerns that he felt were not covered in the MND, including noise impacts, water supply and hauling routes. He also suggested the city hire an environmental attorney for the project, and questioned whether the MND was the right way to analyze the impacts of the project.

“The MND is the appropriate document … Imposing an [Environment Impact Report] on this project, when MND is the appropriate document is an illegal imposition on the project owner,” said Mayor Frank Zerunyan. “You cannot allow anything but the facts drive what type of a document you’re going to saddle the applicant with.”

Zuckerman persisted with other areas of the report that he felt were insufficient.

“Most of the air quality impacts from this project are not of the highest order because they are going to be short term, and there are rules that apply to them … Had there been a thorough ongoing analysis, we would have had the opportunity to discuss required choices,” he said. “Other areas of concern were location and sizes of staging areas, stock piling of soils, haul routes … Let’s look at those. Those are issues that impact the community.”

LSA Associates Principal Deborah Pracilio said there must be significant impacts to call for an EIR.

“There is no requirement to do the technical analysis for an EIR … You can do the same air quality and noise analysis we did in the MND for an EIR,” Pracilio said. “The technical components could be folded into an EIR and still be considered adequate under the law as long as everything is scientifically correct and we followed the appropriate procedures and the appropriate industry standards.”

Regarding water supply Pracilio said there was adequate availability for both general use and fire supply. The concern of noise also was addressed and “at worst case we would not be exceeding the cities’ standards,” Pracilio said.

A letter from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services also approved the area, stating that any habitats would be transitory.

City traffic engineer Erik Zandvliet addressed issues from the last meeting, including the morning peak hour and the Crenshaw Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive North intersection.

“We did verify that the a.m. rate is about 6.8 percent of the daily rate … Morning peak period extends for a couple of hours, [and this is] consistent with all land uses,” Zandvliet said.

He added that there will be no significant changes to the Crenshaw Boulevard and PV Drive North intersection, as was a concern to council members and residents.

“We have taken the traffic impact guidelines and applied them to this particular project. The intersection of Crenshaw and PV Drive North, for example, was outside the study area, this is because yes, there [were] 20 residential trips outbound in the morning, but there [were] also 18 fewer trips coming in from the old medical land uses,” Zandvliet said.

He added that there is potential for a traffic impact fee, where developers may be required to contribute toward the roadway network.

“This is the big hole that a lot of us are dealing with, particularly for smaller cities, the big cities have already dealt with it by establishing their own traffic impact fees or establishing their general plan element,” Zandvliet said.

Zandvliet also discussed where diverted trips from the existing land use will go, and how it will be addressed.

“The answer is, we don’t know where they are going to go … That is well beyond the scope of any traffic study that you can do,” he said. “When a medical use is relocated, that new medical business will be displacing an old business that was there, so those trips will in general be replaced by the relocated medical office. When you accumulate all of these over the geography it averages itself out and all of these trips cancel each other out.”

Although the MND was accepted, there are still issues that remain before the city decides the outcome of the Mediterranean Village.

City Manager Doug Prichard said staff will prepare a resolution that will include more information about affordable housing, hauling staging and routes and noise mitigation, among other factors.
 
 Visit the PV News website at:  http://www.pvnews.com/local_news/