Group Seeks Public Vote on Plan for Civic Center : Redevelopment: Renters organization approves action at sparsely attended convention. The move puts it at odds with most of the five City Council members it has supported.

SANTA MONICA —  Slow-growth forces carried the day at a sparsely attended convention of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) on Sunday, winning the call for a public vote on the Civic Center redevelopment plan as part of a working platform for the organization that dominates politics in the city.

The call to put the Civic Center plan on the ballot could not have come at a better time for project opponents or a worse time for the seven-member City Council, five members of which were elected with the group’s backing.

The council, which is scheduled to decide the merits of the Civic Center plan next week, has thus far shied away from a public vote. The council members’ stated preference has been to try to handle the complex policy matters themselves--after years of a public process aimed at finding out everyone’s views on revamping the heart of the city.

“It’s better policy to see if it can be handled through the council,” said Councilman Tony Vazquez, who received the group’s support. But Vazquez said he is not opposed to a referendum if differences cannot be worked out.

If the council passes the plan next week, Civic Center opponents will go into high gear to collect signatures to qualify a referendum for the spring ballot. Sunday’s vote boosts the signature-getting effort by giving it the renters group’s imprimatur.

The 41-20 vote at the convention puts the organization, as it often has been lately, at odds with most of its five council members, providing ammunition for opponents of the Civic Center development plan. The opponents, who include state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), argue that the scope of the redevelopment plan makes it detrimental to the city’s environmental health and quality of life.

“This is a huge boost for critics of the Civic Center,” Hayden said after the vote. “This is a very strong message to the SMRR-elected officials that they are completely isolated.”

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Councilman Paul Rosenstein suggested, however, that it was some of the people who favored a ballot measure who were out of touch.

“I’ve been amazed at the overwhelming support (for the plan) at public hearings and workshops,” Rosenstein said. “We’re talking about taking what is currently an automobile wonderland and turning it into a pedestrian, jogger and bicyclist heaven. . . . I see the new Civic Center as the jewel in the crown of Santa Monica.”

Rosenstein and Councilman Ken Genser are co-chairmen of a working design group that recently presented a master plan for the 85-acre site, bounded by Ocean Avenue, 4th Street, Pico and Colorado boulevards. This group and an earlier task force met extensively in a public process that began in 1988.

The Civic Center area includes Santa Monica City Hall, the Santa Monica County courthouse and the Civic Auditorium. It also includes a huge surface parking lot that nearly surrounds those buildings.

The largest private landowner in the area is RAND Corp., a private, nonprofit research company that owns much of the property along the west side of Ocean Avenue. Besides expanding its own facility by 500,000 square feet, RAND is seeking to build housing and commercial buildings on the rest of its property, using the revenue to help finance its research.

The move for a public vote on the Civic Center arose as part of an effort to redefine the mission of the renters group by writing a specific platform on a variety of issues including development, rent control, homelessness and public safety.

The group has been badly divided on these issues for several years, causing fierce internal battles and fears that the strife would weaken the group’s stranglehold on local politics.

On Sunday, the group took steps toward a final platform by amending its bylaws and passing planks on growth and rent control. Public safety and other issues will be debated at subsequent meetings, leading to a final platform to be adopted at the group’s spring meeting.

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Leaders of the renters group emphasized that the platform is a working document that may change before its final adoption. They also noted that the relatively small turnout Sunday--only 79 voting members showed up--means that the platform planks do not necessarily reflect the views of the group’s 300 or so activists or its 6,500 dues-paying members.

Still, the vote was a message that at least among those who attended, the long-predicted demise of the slow-growth movement may indeed be premature.

“I think this gives us food for thought,” group co-chairwoman Nancy Greenstein said.

But Hayden said that in light of what he views as the group’s reluctance to lead the charge against overdevelopment in the city, he may form a group devoted to a public dialogue on development and homeless-related issues.

“I have always felt it is strange and paradoxical that (a group so tough on landlords) would be so ambiguous toward developers and the quality of life in the city,” Hayden told the convention.

“I think it has to do with the organization’s elected officials, who have relative latitude to run the city . . . without a progressive platform to hold them accountable,” he said.

In addition to adopting specific platform planks on Sunday, the renters group moved toward cutting down on internal dissension on policy matters and made an attempt to keep its maverick council members in check. The group passed bylaw changes that would require candidates seeking the group’s endorsement to submit their written views on the group’s platform issues.

Modifications were made to a proposal that candidates who are endorsed by the group support one another or risk losing the endorsement. It will ask candidates to pledge “not to oppose any other SMRR-endorsed candidate.”

This rule came about because of an effort by some of the group’s council members in the last election to undermine others with whom they had clashed on development issues.

Former Santa Monica Mayor Dennis Zane spoke out against any kind of loyalty oath. “Finding a rule to solve a political problem causes more problems,” Zane said. “Political problems should be solved politically.”

As expected, the group voted for a strong rent-control platform. Although the convention was more decorous than it has been of late, many speakers took note of the recent dissension within the group and the need to pull together to fight challenges to rent control. The biggest threat, they said, is likely to arise in Sacramento when the Legislature’s principal champion of rent control, state Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti (D-Van Nuys), retires next year.

“We have to unite if we’re going to save rent control,” said renters group leader Michael Tarbet.