The convenience store in our building isn’t very big, and it makes sense that the real estate on the tiny magazine rack is valuable space. So it’s not surprising that the dominant titles there feature celebrities, ab-building regimens and a smattering of business titles.
It’s what’s not there that is telling. No Time magazine, no Newsweek. It’s hard to be a general interest news weekly when the news buzzes in your pocket every few minutes.
The Business Journal has been waging that battle for years, taking on larger rivals for your attention. In large part, we’ve been successful by playing “small ball,” covering the new and innovative L.A. companies that fly below the radar of the dailies and the national business magazines or using our weekly perspective to offer a different, localized angle to an important transaction or trend. And we have been fortunate over the years to have had a dogged staff that sniffed out great stories in overlooked places.
But just as Time and Newsweek have struggled to stay relevant, so too have we been buffeted by the challenges faces by the print world.
This week’s issue marks the first step in our response to that. Regular readers will notice some subtle changes – a new feature here, a redesigned page there. They are the first steps in a journey we’re very excited about.
The key is to keep delivering on our promise of quality, elevating the journalism we do while at the same time putting it in a package that is both relevant and exciting to look at.
Our choice was stark: stay rooted in the past or embrace the present and prepare for the future. This week’s issue plants our flag firmly on the side of transforming into a forward-looking publication that prides itself not only on the quality of its journalism but on the package that writing and reporting is wrapped in.
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There are sections of Santa Monica that still feel like a sleepy beachside town, that bring to mind September days “down the shore” back East when the weather was great and there was no one on the streets.
But that’s a vestige of a bygone Santa Monica. While it may hold on and has its charm, it does not reflect the reality of a city whose core technology and creative businesses have pushed rents up nearly $2 a foot above the Los Angeles County average, that is a destination for international tourists and that commands some of the highest residential values in the region.
The challenge, of course, is to strike a balance between that which made Santa Monica appealing to all those businesses and homebuyers – it feels like a sleepy beachside town – and the impact all that success has wrought.
An effort underway to place an initiative on the city’s November ballot that would require all development projects that rise higher than 32 feet to be subjected to a citywide vote after they have been approved by the City Council will not serve that balance. (See the story by Howard Fine on Page 1.)
If passed, once a project is approved its developer would be forced to wait until the next general election to have it placed on the ballot or foot the bill for a special election that could run as high as $200,000.
As a result, the initiative would chill all new development of even modest height (32 feet is but three stories), crimping not only the construction of new offices but of sorely needed multifamily residential projects. That, of course, is the goal of the Residocracy, a community group out gathering the signatures.
But the unintended consequences that flow from our embrace of the initiative process in California are real and, oftentimes, harmful. I’m happy to have low property taxes thanks to Proposition 13, but they come at the cost of rendering the state unable to afford to live up to its obligations to its citizenry. And look at the harm done to our neighbors and the legal costs incurred in the fight to push back Proposition 8.
There might well be a need to rein in development in Santa Monica, and it might well be best addressed by enacting height restrictions. But there is a mechanism in place to do that already – the city has a Planning Commission that answers to the City Council. If residents want changes to the way projects are approved or the types of projects allowed in the city, they should take it up with the officials charged with writing and enforcing those regulations.
If they don’t live up to their responsibilities, mobilize to vote them out. But don’t add another layer of bureaucracy and citizen oversight to a system that already provides a thoughtful, professional and public process for monitoring and measuring growth.
