Entire City Council Votes for Death of Historic Community Golf Course

The Harvard Westlake Project was approved by the Los Angeles City Council today, and Harvard Westlake has now received rubber stamps from every stage of a legally questionable, abbreviated Planning process. Today, the City Council voted for their private campaign dollars to keep flowing and green-lighted permits for real bulldozers to destroy the Studio City Golf & Tennis golf course and beautiful driving range in favor of an over-sized, elite, private sports facility, lit up with 80-ft lights, and surrounded with eleven-foot walls.

The PLUM meeting to send the permit request to the City Council was only last week, Wednesday, November 7th, at 2:00 pm (40 minutes before L.A. public school children are dismissed on Tuesdays). Hundreds of neighbors, San Fernando Valley neighborhood council members, residents, and environmentalists came out to preserve 16 acres of open green space along the L.A. River that Harvard Westlake and local politicians are willing to replace with miles of concrete and over 10,000 yards of AstroTurf. Despite the overwhelming turn-out in opposition to the project and facts on record, the Council Members led no discussion. They showed no curiosity about the details of its ambitious and controversial private plan.

In 2021, Teri Austin, Save Weddington, environmental organizations, and Studio City residents secured a Historic-Cultural Monument Nomination for the golf course. The Historic-Cultural Monument Nomination included the mid-century designed driving range, golf course, putting green, and clubhouse as a historic record of post-World War II design.

Harvard Westlake’s lobbyists and marketing have manipulated our political leaders and city planning system so well that it now has political clearance to excavate agricultural land, defying the historic cultural nomination’s recommendations. Harvard Westlake, with all its rhetoric and the willful ignorance of its many lawyers and lobbyists, plans to destroy 16 historic acres of open green space, preserving a tiny putting green no one will miss and a very narrow 5-acre long public walking path outside of the surrounding eleven-foot walls.

The current talking point for this deceptive campaign is “low impact,” as if the project is a “low impact” excavation of nearly 200 square yards of carbon-sequestering soil, a concrete gymnasium over 80,000 sq ft, over 10,000 sq ft of plastic AstroTurf, and 80 ft stadium lights. But most of all, they like to pretend that losing a 50-year-old, historic, and welcoming community recreation center, where every family member can participate for only a few bucks, is being destroyed--has no impact. Another massive effect this construction would have is an increase in the heat index in L.A. But Harvard-Westlake has paid a lot of experts to hide the environmental damages (see 1,000 pages of FEIR). The lasting psychological impact of this project is losing a rare find that maintains a better quality of life for many families in L.A. It erases an open, highly aesthetic experience for those living in and experiencing the neighborhood.

Last year, a few minutes before the Historic Cultural Nomination was voted on by the LA Planning Board, Member Paul Krekorian and the Planning Board gutted it without public notice. The private school’s lobbyists knew this would happen, but the public did not. Krekorian removed the historic driving range and golf course by striking “golf course” from the nomination, and the clerk replaced "golf course" with Harvard Westlake’s request for a “recreational center.” As if the Cultural Historic Monument Nomination for the golf course was intended to support an elite sports center.

One might think it would take a lot of effort to destroy a cohesive community’s beloved historic landmark zoned for agriculture and to overcome thousands of loud, visual, and persistent citizen resistance, but all it takes is a well-marketed story based on lies; a network of well-placed alumni, and campaign funding influence for politicians in high places. Harvard Westlake stakeholders pretended to look worried about passing every city hurdle, but they are probably only worried about whether their shenanigans will hold water with California courts.

Even though Harvard Westlake is the aggressive developer for this project, the blame lands with our city’s politicians for allowing the demolition of an L.A. County asset.

In addition to Council President Paul Krekorian gutting the HCM when he represented CD4, Council Member Nithya Raman is the second of two Council Members “representing” Studio City. As an urban planner from Harvard, it’s evident that Council Member Raman understands how damaging this project is to the Los Angeles community. Yet, her team took a very long time to produce a small list of changes for her to approve Harvard Westlake’s permits to build. Sadly, these conditions and promises do nothing to pause the construction of a massive 80,000-square-foot gymnasium, the removal of over 200 square yards of soil, or the removal of over 200 mature tree canopies. Except for her request for Harvard Westlake not to use plastic Astroturf, CD4’s conditions will have no bearing on lessening Harvard-Westlake’s carbon footprint, nor will they improve the diminished quality of life that will be felt by Angelenos affected by the thoughtless actions of the City Council. Over 100,000 people use the Studio City Golf & Tennis Club yearly for family recreation.

Council Member Nithya Raman is running for office and campaigning as a person who values “environmental action.” Sure, no one’s perfect when it comes to protecting the environment, but supporting Harvard Westlake’s demolition of over 200 mature canopy trees, excavating over 200 square yards of carbon sequestering soil for “subterranean” parking, adding over 10,000 feet of non-negotiable Astroturf, a massive 80,000 square-foot concrete gym, and replacing an open landscape with walls? Harvard Westlake’s plan is very “status quo” and nowhere near Raman’s call for “environmental action” no matter how many solar panels they perch on top of this monstrosity. Harvard Westlake’s marketing of this project brings to mind an oil company in Texas investing in CO2 removal technology to increase its oil production.

Council Member Paul Krekorian once defended Studio City Golf & Tennis from housing developers. Still, as President Krekorian, he now supports Harvard-Westlake’s plan, and today, as expected, he led City Council members to vote for an influential private school to destroy a 50-year-old 16-acre open green space next to the L.A. River. Krekorian recently spoke at a Studio City Residents meeting, and someone offered him a water bottle. He said, “I won’t drink water out of a plastic bottle," value signaling to his local audience that he was standing up to plastic waste while he was green-washing Harvard Westlake’s apparent land use violations. Krekorian fully supports Harvard Westlake's plastic Astroturf obsession.

The Facebook page Jerry Brown is not an environmentalist reminds us that the governor who inspired Ireland to go green and advocated for reducing coal in China also lobbied for gas and oil and almost succeeded in aligning California’s power grid with coal states. Politicians have learned that they get points for saying the right thing about our climate emergency, even if they don’t act on it. And the earth keeps getting hotter.

It's one thing when individuals ignore the climate emergency out of convenience, need, or lack of options. Still, when our political and business leaders say one thing and do another, their decisions have more significant consequences on wildlife, air quality, ocean welfare, our threatened food sources, compatible infrastructure, and Democracy.

For instance, we have had a primary and mental health doctor shortage for at least a decade; in my estimation, do you hear a single political leader talking about this problem that affects every one of us? Or hear any campaigning for funding to train new doctors, STAT? President Obama’s plan touched on it, but we still have this extreme problem. We need better leaders focusing on and attempting to solve our shared problems.

An honest leader will have the courage to stand up to power. Yet today, most politicians can’t because their political lives depend on the wealth of a few extremely wealthy people. It’s the adage, “A man won’t see the truth if his salary depends on him not seeing the truth.”

I recently heard a California Assemblyman say that he understands how projects that are environmentally responsible and good for business are the best of both worlds. He had no examples that day and shared his vision of enormous ocean wind turbines generating jobs. “The environment” nearly always loses to “good business.” This unbalanced relationship is precisely why we are in this global climate crisis and losing a 16-acre open green space in Los Angeles.

Demanding an honest city government is essential to uphold democratic practices. A truly representative city government can better preserve cultural and historical landmarks that wealthy businesses won’t value. The city parcels every square foot of land in L.A., not only for the 1%, but for the common good.

Where exactly is our City Council willing to value and save historic cultural monuments for future generations to experience? A young Studio City resident recently said in a community meeting, “Nobody is building more open green space.”

Harvard Westlake is asking for Conditional Permits, which are only supposed to be approved when the applicant shows a clear benefit for the “public welfare,” not private playgrounds. They keep saying they will “share” the facilities, but no one expects them to start doing what they don’t do on their present campus. No one can force Harvard Westlake to “share.” At the last PLUM meeting, I heard someone say people from the school are talking about “insurance” not allowing the public in. The private school has already narrowed what “public” means and its "non-profit teams," not the general public. Harvard-Westlake will be the gatekeepers, not Council Members, in CD4. Harvard Westlake will not provide a public field for the neighborhood or allow individuals or neighboring public high school students to use the pool. There will be no public benefit in this elite-centric project, no matter how many times their lobbyists and boosters say there will be. Yet, based on un-demonstrated behavior, our City Council has granted Harvard Westlake Conditional Permits to use as they please. What if they don't adequately share their facilities? Isn't that a zoning violation?

Let's take a peek at Studio City’s other 99%. North Hollywood High School has a new gym but no pool. Geographically closer to the Harvard Westlake elite sports center proposal, the Walter Reed Middle School has never had a running track. Our eighteen-year-old son has a permanent injury from running on Walter Reed’s open field during P.E.; many public schools in L.A. may not even benefit from an open field.

Much of my motivation for saving the Studio City Golf & Tennis public green space for a much less impactful, less environmentally destructive project is because the golf course and driving range (and a dozen tennis courts) currently cater to families and teenagers from all backgrounds and incomes. An open golf course is a healthy heart for any community; look at Verdugo's ongoing community golf course story. Harvard Westlake’s project is an existential red flag that indicates a diminished quality of life for more than a hundred thousand people in Los Angeles. Harvard-Westlake likes to pretend and suggest that “only” the people in Studio City care about this property. Studio City Golf & Tennis is treasured by families all over L.A. County; check out Save Weddington’s interviews: https://saveweddington.org/tes...

Losing a beloved community golf course and open green space that is so close to our home, knowing how united our extended community is against this particular use of agricultural land, seeing how political and entrenched Harvard Westlake is in one very unimaginative plan, and city representatives and many press outlets ignoring thousands of letters, community, and influential statements, have made me a strong advocate for publicly funded campaigns.

We need to shake the influence of extreme money and dark money out of politics to save our Democracy. Congress could even start a large fund for publicly financed campaigns by requiring retiring politicians to invest their unspent campaign cash in a public campaign fund accessible to qualified candidates. We must outlaw PACs and paid lobbying as a direct threat to honest and equal representation in our democratic process. If we, the 99%, had direct representation, we would have better public schools, better parks, and better streets, and we could accelerate our adaptation to dangerous warming trends. Even Council Member Nithya Raman supports publicly funded campaigns.

Harvard-Westlake is one of the wealthiest private schools in the world; they have an extensive network of wealthy people who influence the lives of the politicians who are supposed to represent the rest of us, too. Two influential Harvard-Westlake alumni lobbied for this project while serving on the City Planning Commission board that rubber-stamped this project on August 12, 2023. At this meeting, committee members expressed shock to learn that eleven-foot walls would surround the project but voted unanimously for the private school anyway. I’ll never forget a Harvard Westlake alumni saying, “I feel comfortable voting for this,” even though she has multiple financial relationships with Harvard Westlake.

Stop bribery in broad daylight.

Save our Democracy. Save our Planet.

#publiclyfinancedcampaings #banPACS #banDarkMoney #banPaidLobbying