Culver City Planners to Consider New Report on Marina Place Project

The Culver City Planning Commission will consider a revised environmental impact report for the massive Marina Place office project next week, more than a year after members rejected the first version as incomplete.

The commission spurned the first report in January, 1985, after members said it did not adequately address traffic density, air pollution and other effects of the 1.3-million-square-foot project, planned at the end of a narrow strip of Culver City that reaches into Venice.

The revised report, released for public comment last December, suggests that the developer, Prudential Insurance Co., reduce the height of the project to lessen its impact on the neighborhood.

It also said that Culver City should widen some streets to increase traffic flow in the area and require Prudential to conduct a traffic management program to further reduce congestion and pollution.

The commission will consider the report at a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, 4117 Overland Ave.

Prudential wants to build one 12-story and two 17-story and two 15-story office towers, two restaurants and a parking garage on an 18.3-acre site bounded by Washington Boulevard, Zanja Street and Glencoe and Walnut avenues. The council gave preliminary approval to the plan in 1984, but said Prudential must scale down the size of the buildings.

The project would take about five years to build and would house about 5,000 employees.

Residents of the Venice neighborhood near the site complained that the proposed development is too large and would increase traffic congestion and air pollution in their community.

The revised report, prepared for Culver City by an outside consulting firm, said the Marina Place project would increase traffic by more than 13,000 daily car trips to the area.

It suggested that Culver City require Prudential to start a traffic management program and hire a full-time coordinator to encourage car-pooling and public transit use. Such a program could reduce traffic by 15% to 20%, the report stated.

It also said that Glencoe Avenue could be widened to include four lanes to improve traffic flow there, and that left- and right-turn lanes be added at the intersection of Washington and Lincoln.

Although a 5,200-space parking garage planned by developers would take care of employee parking, visitors would probably park on residential streets bordering the project, the report said. The problem could be remedied by a parking permit program for residents and visitors run by Culver City and the city of Los Angeles, with Marina Place paying the administrative costs and permit fees, it said.