The City of Santa Monica issued a notice of preparation for an environmental impact report for the Ocean Avenue Project...The project, as currently imagined, calls for the construction of mid-rise and low-rise structures, as well as the preservation of two landmarks homes fronting Ocean Avenue. — Urbanize LA

A developer looking to erect a hotel tower designed by Frank Gehry on Santa Monica’s iconic Ocean Avenue has reworked its plans and released a new rendering of the project.

Originally proposed five years ago as 22 stories, the hotel has been reduced to 12 stories—or 130 feet—to comply with the city’s new development plan for downtown. It’s just one part of a larger project that would also include a museum, shops, ground-floor open space, and 79 apartments. — Curbed LA

On a small and skinny lot wedged behind its historic city hall, Santa Monica is trying to accomplish something that has never been done before in California. By 2020, the city hopes to construct a 50,000-square-foot city services building that will meet the requirements of the International Living Future Institute’s “Living Building Challenge” — the most stringent environmental building standard in the world. — latimes.com

The $1.5-billion second leg of the Expo Line, which opened Friday from Culver City to Santa Monica, adds seven light-rail stations and more than six miles of track to the growing Los Angeles County transit network. [...]

In the immediate context of L.A.'s attempts to turn its public-transit network from national punch line to something that increasingly resembles a mature system, 13 new Metro stations in less than three months qualifies as a pretty dramatic upgrade. — latimes.com

"Small houses can tell big stories," read the apt white words on the pamphlet's blue cover.

The shotgun house's Ocean Park neighborhood had once been full of such modest dwellings. It was a working-class place — home to carpenters and painters and people who washed other people's laundry.

But that kind of history most often is erased over time, as little houses make way for bigger ones. Ordinary people often don't chronicle their lives — and when they leave, their stories do too. — LA Times

In the 1930s and '40s, the Mabery Road house in Santa Monica Canyon belonged to Hollywood screenwriter Salka Viertel, who made her house a home not only for her family but for hundreds of refugees, some very famous and others unknown... While anti-Fascist volunteers were spiriting people out of Europe, Viertel in Santa Monica was taking them in... She helped to rescue, among many others, the German Expressionist writer Leonhard Frank, the Dadaist poet Walter Mehring, and Alfred Döblin... — Los Angeles Times

"The public sector stopped making public space a long time ago," Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde told Wired magazine rather matter-of-factly in 1999. [...]

A little more than two decades later, there is something quaintly fatalistic about Jerde's attitude toward the frail state of public space. In Los Angeles, at least, it has returned pretty dramatically to health. — latimes.com

[Santa Monica will] be able to offer its residents real net neutrality, which the [FCC] is working on rolling back for just about everyone else in the US. [...]

Santa Monica has cleverly and quietly been installing its own network of city-owned fiber-optic cables for years, and they intend to keep the net neutral. [...]

Santa Monica has also made about $5 million providing internet service and leasing out the cables to other providers, and their competition has driven down rates. — la.curbed.com

The design called for a series of rectangular buildings skewed on an axis comprised of ground-floor retail, office development and proposed residential and flex office space and the upper section would be a hotel, according to city officials.

“I have to say that the Metro Pacific is a beautiful project and you look at it and it’s stunning architecturally,” Davis said. “The affordable housing is kind of an afterthought … . It’s a little unclear of how many units we are going to get.” — smdp.com

OMA is on a winning spree on both American coasts right now: we reported last week that the team consisting of OMA, Tishman Realty and UIA Management had won the Miami Beach Convention Center Master Plan competition, and just earlier this month, OMA's New York office was also declared winner of a major competition for a mixed use development in Santa Monica, California. In both cases, OMA's submissions prevailed over entries by fellow finalists Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). — bustler.net

Frank Gehry is designing a new 22-story tower that developers want to build in downtown Santa Monica, near the intersection of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, according to the official website for the project. The structure will feature space for a hotel and condominiums, as well as restaurant and retail space. — latimes.com