STOP SUPPORT THE WESTWOOD SPECIFIC PLAN! JOIN 1000+ OTHER SUPPORTERS!
The Honorable Councilmember Paul Koretz
Westwood Neighbors for Sensible Growth is a new community-based coalition which has come together in response to concerns about the proposed Belmont Senior Living project. The Specific Plan represents a pact between the City and its residents. Belmont Senior Living wants to violate our Specific Plan in the name of more profits, at our community’s expense.
- Plan to build a 153 foot tall project, more than double the maximum height allowed in the Specific Plan.
- Projects that double, triple or quadruple the height and density allowed, like the Belmont project, are going to have outsized and unnecessary impacts on residents and commuters.
- Belmont’s application and renderings are misleading to the public.
While they assert that they need to build a 153 foot tall project (more than double the allowed height) in order to make it viable, that’s simply not true. Belmont could build a very high-quality senior living project that abides by the Specific Plan, just like their existing facility that’s a handful of blocks away, they just wouldn’t make as many millions as they would if they double the allowed size.
Please sign our petition today and tell Belmont and the City of Los Angeles that they should deny the Belmont project unless it complies with the Specific Plan.
Please share this petition with your friends, family and neighbors, and please post it on social media. Let’s get the word out that together, we can protect our neighborhoods from developers seeking outsized profits at the expense of communities.
Petition by
To:
The Honorable Councilmember Paul Koretz
From:
[Your Name]
We want you to know that we oppose the proposed development by Belmont Village Senior Living at 10822 Wilshire Boulevard on the parking lot of the Westwood Presbyterian Church. It should not be allowed to go forward as filed.
The Belmont building contravenes the requirements of the Wilshire Corridor Specific Plan which have been adopted by the community specifically to protect against the over-development of the Wilshire Corridor into a “concrete canyon.” This project would be more than twice the allowed height of 75’. It proposes to house twice the number of people allowed by the Westwood Corridor Specific Plan. In order to accommodate the Belmont building, they plan to shove the school that already operates in existing church buildings (in the middle of the property) into a single-family lot at the back of the site. The new school building is too high and too big (according to existing zoning) for R-1 zone and will adversely impact the lives of the neighbors in the area. Then they want to extend operational hours from early morning until early evening vastly expanding the hours where people will be coming and going in this quiet residential neighborhood.
In order to access the school and the Belmont project the developer would open a heretofore private entrance at Ashton making it the main entrance to the Belmont project and school. Belmont does not propose to provide any parking for its staff or for visitors to the residents. The substantial increase in car visits and delivery trucks will further intensify the already dangerous traffic in our area. On Wilshire Blvd we currently suffer from congestion, poor sight lines much of the day, and auto accidents at the intersections of Malcolm and Wilshire.
In short, the proposed project has significant impact on the community for the exclusive financial benefit of Belmont. This is about money--lots of it--flowing to Belmont on the backs of the neighbors. The church may be a respected entity, but it too is looking to shore up its financial situation through burdens on the community. Its members are not the ones who will experience the downsides of the project. The whole project is oversized and inappropriate on this lot.
We want you to know that there is significant opposition in the neighborhood to this project even though we lack the enormous financial resources that Belmont has at its disposal. We want to make sure that you hear our voices raised against it.