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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Can Eco-Marketing Launch Las Lomas Project?

The “greening” of corporate marketing has proliferated in the last few years with companies touting their commitment to sustainability and environmental sensitivity as another way to standout. One such eco-marketing and lobbying effort is afoot to help a developer gain approvals for a large project in a steeply wooded hillside location along the I-5 Freeway between the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys. On its face, the proposed project, called Las Lomas by master developer Palmer Investments, is possibly as green and environmentally sensitive as a mixed-use community could be. Proposals for the project adhere to accepted “smart growth” principles for a new development, with solar-powered residential, commercial, retail and public-use buildings in a woodland setting serviced by a biodiesel-powered tram. The community would run its own biodiesel-powered bus system to take residents to various transit hubs, limiting the number of off-site car trips. All buildings would be designed to a minimum of silver LEED certification standards. A state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility and stormwater catchment program would recycle all of the site’s water. Streetlights would be powered by the wind. According to Richard Thompson, principal and director of urban design and planning for A.C. Martin Partners Inc. and lead planner for the Las Lomas project, “The idea was to put everything on the table that represented the state of the art in sustainability and what we might be able to do in a large-scale community like this. We put a lot of things out there and Dan (Palmer) has embraced most of them.” But the project’s many opponents including two members of Congress, a state senator, a state assemblymember and a county supervisor cite a series of negatives that they say far outweigh the positives. The 555-acre site is planned to support 5,800 mostly multi-family residences and 2,000,000 square feet of commercial, retail, public and hospitality buildings. The property runs adjacent to the I-5 just north of its junction with Highway 14, amid a wildlife corridor and just across the freeway from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. Investments in infrastructure would need to be made, including widening The Old Road, adding freeway ramps and building a new Metrolink station deep under the mountains, critics say. “The preposterousness of taking 1,000 feet of mountains and shaving them off to fill-in gullies and valleys to make flatlands and move 20,000,000 cubic feet of dirt is more like an environmental holocaust rather than the environmental remediation that he (Dan Palmer) is so fond of referring to it as,” said Bart Reed, executive director of The Transit Coalition. Reed is alluding to the fact that Palmer has been quoted numerous times as saying that Las Lomas would take a site that has been degraded by its use as a paintball play area and return it to its natural splendor. “The paintball site is one-half of an acre out of 555 acres,” said Reed. “There’s nothing there that needs to be remediated with the exception of that fraction that’s a paintball park.” The proposed on-site wastewater treatment plant would allow most of the water brought into Las Lomas to be recycled and re-used on-site. “All of the office and commercial buildings will be designed with a two-pipe system,” said Thompson. One pipe will have potable water and the other will have “gray water” non-sewer household water treated after use that will flush toilets, irrigate the landscape, and run through buildings’ radiant heating tubes. Even storm water runoff will be captured, treated and re-used. “We will have extra water at the end of the day,” said Thompson, “and nearby golf courses will be able to use the gray water that is left over.” But in a white paper outlining his reasons for opposing the project, Councilman Greig Smith claimed that the city’s Sanitation Department rejected the Las Lomas plan to have an on-site water treatment facility. Countering that, Thompson said, “We met several times with the Los Angeles Sanitation Department. They’re very excited about this. The questions we’re working out with them are: Will we manage that as sort of an out-sourced facility or will they take over the management of it? They’ve embraced the idea; they think it’s wonderful, and so that’s not really the issue. It’s an issue of bureaucracy and how to manage it within their existing system.” Another innovative program is a solid waste recycling system using pyrolysis, a way of burning solid waste at very high heat intensity. Thompson said the process creates an ash that is usable as fertilizer and the energy generated by the incineration process can also be captured and turned into electricity. Yet Thompson allows that proposal might not be feasible. “It’s not a new process but there are some questions about whether it can work,” he said. “Greig Smith actually likes that system but others are suggesting there may be pollution issues with it that may or may not be solvable.” Renewable Energy The plan is that at least 50 percent of the properties’ energy requirements will be generated through renewable sources, primarily solar and wind. “We’re requiring all residential buildings be wired for (solar) photovoltaics. That makes it easier to put them in later,” said Thompson. “In the commercial sector, for the commercial, office and retail buildings, we are looking to require builders to place photovoltaics on probably 35 to 40 percent of the buildings. Also the roof surfaces of every parking structure will have an array of photovoltaics to serve both as an energy generator and for shading cars.” Wind is another component of the Las Lomas energy plan. “There’s a good deal of wind coming through there and we can capture a good deal of wind energy with a relatively small number of compact, small-scale turbines,” said Thompson. “What we’re thinking about now is having all of our street lighting and all energy for public components of the project school, police, library, street lights and so forth be powered off wind energy or photovoltaics placed on the south-facing edges of the retaining walls.” Santa Clarita-based development consultant Allan Cameron isn’t buying it, offering this analogy, “If you built a slaughterhouse at the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards, equipped it with solar panels, a water cleaning system and a tram to take its employees down to the Metrolink station in North Hollywood, would that make the project appropriate?” Transportation There are two elements of the Las Lomas transportation system. The first is an inter-community trolley system that would allow people to get from one place on-site to another without using their automobile. That trolley system would run on biodiesel. The second is an off-site shuttle or bus system that would be operated by and paid for by the homeowners’ association. Those vehicles would also utilize biodiesel for fuel. “The plan is to hit basically all the major transit nodes in the Valley the North Hollywood Red Line, the Orange Line station, CSUN, down to Encino and Warner Center,” said Thompson. Addressing the movement of people on- and off-site, Bart Reed said that most of the project’s residents that would be using the off-site service would ride the shuttle just during peak hours, during the morning and evening commute. Even if the system had 30 buses, he said, that would equate to about 1,200 seats. “Since there’s 20,000 people who will supposedly be living (at Las Lomas),” said Reed, “those buses can only hold a fraction of the people living there.” Air Quality With Las Lomas being sited so close to the I-5, air quality for the residents is a concern. “As far as air quality, we are looking particularly at the school site and re-orienting that further back,” said Thompson. A UCLA study released recently showed the negative effects of pollution generated by freeways on children attending schools located near area freeways. “We already have it set back about 400 feet and they would like to have it set back about 500 feet so we’re trying to wiggle the school away. When the UCLA study came out we immediately started rethinking the school’s siting,” said Thompson. Uncertain Future Las Lomas has a series of hurdles to leap. Attempts to have the property annexed by the City of Los Angeles have been rejected twice. State, county and local agencies have to approve the myriad of infrastructure improvements that would be necessary. And in another twist, the spending bill signed by President Bush on Dec. 26 included $3 million for a study of the Rim of the Valley Corridor in the Santa Monica Mountains Conservation area. The Las Lomas project falls within the study area, calling into question whether the property could eventually come under National Park Service management.

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