"Highrose" Apartment Project Stinks to High Heaven
Four story apartment building slated for approval in El Porto
A Manhattan Beach resident has building plans for a monstrous 79-unit, 4 story apartment building at the corner of Highland and Rosecrans Avenues in North Manhattan Beach. This neighborhood is one of the most densely populated in our beach city and is a main thoroughfare for north/south traffic on a two-lane street. Nearly doubling our city’s height restriction and density codes, the “Highrose” development sidesteps all of our municipal zoning, planning commission evaluation and approval, and Manhattan Beach resident input.
The developer of the Highrose project must respect and follow our MB city building restrictions and planning process, not take advantage of the Sacramento density laws that are a cash cow for the developer but catastophically destructive to our community.
How did this happen?
Our elected officials in Sacramento passed density laws in 2021 with the intention to spur more building of apartments in California cities that are already overpopulated or overbuilt. The density laws provide developers incentives to build apartments with a percentage allotted to very low-income families, in turn allowing the developer to circumvent local zoning and ignore input and concerns by surrounding homeowners. In addition, these laws nullify the California Environmental Quality Act. Regardless if the residents and members of City Council argue the project is too dense for the neighborhood, adds unmanageable traffic to the already jammed intersection, and is inappropriately oversized for the site, the developer gets a free pass by Sacramento lawmakers. It’s an overreach by Sacramento and the Highrose developer is taking full advantage.
How do Density Laws affect this project?
Any developer who designates a mere 5% of the apartments as “very low income” is granted waivers and concessions that allow them to sidestep our local restrictions. The developer of Highrose took all the concessions including:
Increasing the height of the apartment complex from 30’ to 50’
Increasing the building footprint
Reducing the building setbacks established by our city
Reducing the number of parking spots our city typically requires. The limited parking spaces built by the developer force renters to seek parking elsewhere.
Why are we just hearing about this now?
The plans to develop Highrose were submitted to the City in March 2021 and went through seven rounds of revisions with our City Planning Department. Many people including the Director of Community Development and her staff, the Planning Commission, and others at City Hall were aware of or involved in the unfolding of this project. It was not until January 6th of this year when the Highrose application was deemed complete the public became aware of Highrose with a notice from City Hall to the surrounding businesses in El Porto.
What happens next?
Next week, the Director of Community Development, Carrie Tai, will be giving the project a final review to ensure the developer has complied with Sacramento density laws. Ms. Tai’s review is not subjective, she is merely checking for compliance. Once she signs the approval, an appeal process can begin but the appeal discussions are limited only to how the project does not potentially comport with the density laws out of Sacramento. Local zoning, input, and concerns have little or no bearing on this. Formal appeals can come from our Planning Commission and City Council. For more information on the appeal process, contact Ms. Carrie Tai at 310-802-5503.
So where does that leave the voice of the residents?
Cities have a right to determine what is best for their own city and they must stand up to this overreach by Sacramento.
State politicians and the Governor have blindly imposed density legislation upon us without any awareness or regard for the specific environmental impact this project will have on our city. They have not considered the extreme traffic and parking issues that will be devastating to our already congested North Manhattan and El Porto neighborhoods.
For these reasons and more, community development decisions MUST be made at the local level and the city and residents have a right to push back on this overreach by the state and the developer.
How to Push Back:
Step 1
Read and sign the petition here with the other 2600+ residents opposing the Highrose development using the density laws.
We are all for capitalism, but this development takes advantage of low-income housing density laws, not to house needy families, but to make twice the profits while the rest of the MB community pays the price with increased density, parking, and congestion.
The Highrose project must respect and follow our MB city planning process and building restrictions.
Step 2
Email our 5 elected representatives on City Council and ask for their voice to be heard and to support pushback on this project and the state overreach: citycouncil@citymb.info
Step 3
Spread the word by sharing this email with your friends and family and ask them to push back by signing the petition and contacting City Council.
Step 4
Contact our state Representatives and ask them to intervene on this project:
Senator Ben Allen: 916-651-4026 senator.allen@senate.ca.gov
Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi 916-319-2066 assemblymember.muratsuchi.ca.gov
Just as every state has state sovereignty and can legally push back on the overreach by the Federal Government, Cities have a legal right to push back on the overreach by the State.
See more details of the Highrose project on the City website here.
These are the times that try men's and women's souls, to paraphrase Thomas Paine at Valley Forge.
He was trying to bolster the revolutionary soldiers' spirits in that dreadful winter. We in Manhattan Beach are having our ideological winter against the socialist forces of evil threatening our nation. This evil has invaded our beautiful town.
Mother Theresa, when asked how she intended to help all the indigent people responded, “By helping one person at a time.” Similarly, we need to rescue our little town as a way to stop this insidious attack on our American principles. We need to take back our City Council and our local School Board, which has almost destroyed our wonderful schools. So please join us at MBStrong. Bring in as many like-minded people as you can into our organization. WE WILL PREVAIL!!!
~MB Resident of many years
If you have a letter you would like to share with our subscribers, please email it to us at MBStrong2021@gmail.com
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In our next Newsletter: Crime update; City Council to discuss turning Bruce’s Beach park into a party spot; another inspiring letter from an MB resident.