PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

After 18 years of work, LA’s Department of City Planning has finally unveiled a draft update for the 1988 Hollywood Community Plan, including 105 pages of detailed amendments to increase permitted building densities in Hollywood , as well as a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). If or when this update is eventually adopted, it will then become a template for similar updates of LA’s 34 other community plans. In theory, it also could become a model for Specific Plan amendments to permitting greater densities. Because of the Hollywood plan’s importance to potentially alter private land use patters all throughout Los Angeles , many analysts have carefully scrutinized the draft, especially its DEIR, and submitted their analyses to the Department of City Planning. Among these many submissions, one theme stands out; the Draft Environmental Impact Report does not present a credible planning rationale for the proposed Community Plan update. The following six points summarize muc

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