Submission: Rewriting Westwood’s specific plan would help neighborhood reach full potential

It is an exciting time to be in Westwood, and I believe our district is on the rise.

This past year, many new businesses opened, and more are coming. The Geffen Academy on Kinross and Gayley avenues just began its inaugural school year. The Hammer Museum announced its plan for expanding its brand and presence, and the Metro Purple Line Subway Extension and the 2028 Olympics are coming to Westwood.

Westwood’s progress is also shown in its reported sales tax revenue. In 2012, the first year of the Westwood Business Improvement District, our businesses generated $1.63 million. In 2016, our businesses generated $2.3 million. This marks our second straight year of an increase of over 8 percent.

Westwood is clearly trending in the right direction, but anyone who spends time in our district knows that we have not yet met our potential. Westwood is stymied by a nearly 15 percent vacancy rate, and too many of our buildings need makeovers. And Westwood Village is not yet a destination for nightlife and entertainment.

Westwood falling short of its potential should not be singularly viewed as a negative, though. I believe it presents an opportunity for all Westwood stakeholders, including our elected officials, to rally around the need for progress, especially with such a short window before the arrival of the subway – slated for 2024 – and the 2028 Olympics. Soon, the attention of the world will be focused on our community. We can put our best foot forward.

But we also cannot assume our recent successes will continue. A negative business cycle – one we may be due for – could derail all of our recent progress. To build a commercial district that can withstand economic events out of our control and thrive for the foreseeable future, we need to address serious issues like planning, access, transportation and housing. Communities like downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Culver City have implemented bold policies and are seeing the benefits. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Precedent exists. The road map is there.

We need to build on Westwood’s momentum if we are going to achieve our common goal of creating a vibrant village. Too often, I attend community meetings and hear conversations that appear lost in minutia. I believe we can do better – but to do so, we need to think bigger and have higher expectations.

Westwood stakeholders must engage in an honest discussion regarding the future of our district. The challenge to such an endeavor will be overcoming the pervasive cynicism that exists in our community. All of Westwood needs to evolve beyond the deep-seated mistrust that exists between the various groups and factions. If we fall back into caricatures of greedy landlords and businesses, “Not In My Backyard” neighbors and a self-interested university, we will never achieve meaningful change.

The logical place to begin this effort is by rewriting the Westwood Village Specific Plan, the master planning document that outlines zoning regulations in the Village. It is perhaps the one action in which there is near universal consensus. A new specific plan is not the only measure required to move our Village toward a more secure and competitive future, but it will provide the foundation for which a vibrant neighborhood and UCLA-serving commercial district can be built and sustained.

Last year, the Westwood Village Improvement Association attempted to put together a coalition of stakeholders representing every interest in Westwood with the goal of making recommendations to potentially revise our specific plan. The effort failed, primarily because certain stakeholder groups refused to engage with an effort orchestrated by the WVIA. And here we all are again, a year later, still paralyzed and still victims of our own mistrust.

Westwood is coming back, but to come all the way back – and in time for the subway and the Olympics – we need to begin a sincere discourse today.

There will certainly be reasons why a process to rewrite our specific plan cannot succeed. These reasons must be overcome, though. The process will inevitably include disagreement. We have to accept that conflict is normal and then work to find genuine and healthy compromise. If the WVIA cannot lead this process, we need our elected officials and city planners to step up and provide the leadership, the setting and the opportunity required for all of Westwood to participate in affecting change.

We are at the corner of being an exceptional village. Together, let’s turn the corner.

Thomas is the executive director of the Westwood Village Improvement Association.