Culver City is taking a unique approach to address the ongoing need for housing and jobs through its zoning code.

As part of its General Plan update to guide the city’s direction over the next 20 years, the Culver City Council voted Monday to adopt several major updates to the city’s Zoning Code. Among these is a sweeping change to the city’s industrial and commercial zones. These zones will be entirely replaced with mixed-use zones to allow housing alongside other uses in those areas.

Several Planning Commission amendments were also brought forward following their final approval of the Plan and other amendments also came up in Monday’s meeting. Among those, the amendments approved by the council allow auto sales as a conditional use that requires a permit and changes to a particular tract of parcels on Culver Boulevard between Elenda Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard.

General Plans are used by cities to dictate policy over a wide range of key areas necessary to manage and guide the growth of a city. Among these General Plan elements is the Zoning Element — which regulates what kind of buildings can exist on zones of parcels in the city. This allows a city to dictate where its commercial buildings are built and where single-family and multi-family neighborhoods can exist.

A General Plan update is a part of maintaining compliance with the state’s housing Laws, including requirements from the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) to provide a certain number of new housing units to keep up with demand. Culver City’s planning department went a step further, allocating not just the housing for the coming RHNA cycle, but for the next two eight-year cycles that will occur during the 20 years that this General Plan will be valid.

By creating mixed-use corridors — one of the primarily stated goals of the update — the city hopes to add both housing and jobs throughout the city. Most cities, including other smaller local municipalities like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood include commercial zoning in their housing elements, so Culver City is deviating from the norm in this implementation.

According to projections from the city, the changes to the General Plan and Zoning Code will help accommodate an estimated 21,600 residents and 12,700 new housing units to the city over the lifespan of the General Plan. Additionally, projections show that 16,260 jobs will be added to the city’s employment stock in 3,332,000 square feet of commercial space and 364,800 square feet of new industrial space integrated through these mixed-use zones.

With these changes, there is also a limit on the building heights allowed in some of these zones, starting at 56 feet. This number will decrease closer to single-family neighborhoods — which have their own “R1” zoning classification — to minimize significant height gaps between different parcels.

These neighborhoods are fairly resistant to change in many cities including Culver City, but changes to the code originally approved by the Planning Commission on August 14 uncapped the unit size limit of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) built in the city.

While it has no direct impact on the city’s final policy, the city’s Planning Commission also proposed removing a phrase from the statement of purpose for R1 neighborhoods, removing the idea that part of the city’s goal is to maintain the density of single-family neighborhoods.

The Planning Commission made several amendments to the Zoning Code during its final review on August 14, the most impactful being an increase in allowable housing density in one of the Mixed-Use Zone classifications from 35 dwelling units per acre to 50 dwelling units per acre.

While this amendment was not ultimately adopted, Planning Commissioner Stephen Jones gave public comment at the meeting outside of his role as a commissioner explaining why this density increase was important. Jones showed examples of several buildings in the city with a greater density than 50 dwelling units per acre that fit within the fabric of the city.

“This is not a radical change,” Jones said. “All we are asking is you allow more of the kinds of apartment buildings that used to be legal to build along our corridors.”

Another requirement that prompted this update to the zoning code comes from SB 1000 — the Environmental Justice in Local Land Use Planning Bill. It requires cities to identify neighborhoods that are lower income and are subject to greater exposure to environmental pollution in their land use and zoning policies.

Two of these neighborhoods were identified in Culver City: Clarkdale/Culver West and the Jefferson/Culver neighborhoods. The city will develop particular action plans for these neighborhoods as they have done with the Fox Hills and Hayden Tract neighborhoods.

Fox Hills in particular is expected to receive significant increases to the allowed density to up to 100 dwelling units per acre compared to the 50-70 dwelling units per acre allowed currently in residential Fox Hills. This drew the ire of residents in the area, who argued that the diverse Fox Hills neighborhood was being saddled with a disproportionate increase in housing density compared to other neighborhoods.

“It’s not a matter of policy or numbers,” said Fox Hills resident Deborah Wallace. “It’s about fairness, equity, and the city that we want to be.”

Another stretch that public commenters keyed in on was a small stretch of Culver Boulevard between Elenda Street and Sepulveda Boulevard that was designated as mixed-use. Residents in the area argued that the mixed-use classification was unneeded, a sentiment with which several council members agreed.

Councilmember Albert Vera took many of the positions of public commenters, first questioning the need to change the R1 zone statement as well as to not move forward with increased density in some of the mixed-use zoning in the city. He also echoed sentiments that removing the ADU maximum would also cause unintended consequences.

Councilmember Göran Eriksson reflected on the length of the process, recalling that the process started with former Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells and former Councilmember Thomas Small, and how COVID had made the process far more drawn out than it should have been. Eriksson also stated his support for requiring two community meetings for developments as opposed to one for residential projects and two for commercial projects meant to streamline housing production.

He also spoke of the ADU size limit, noting that the restrictions still in place on Floor-Area Ratio — the measure of the project’s floor area concerning the size of the lot — naturally places a size restriction on any ADU project. Eriksson supported the staff’s decision to decrease the FAR limit to .45 for ADUs in this new zoning code.

Feedback is important, but Councilmember Freddie Puza argued that he found that no amount of outreach was enough for many community members during his time on the General Plan Advisory Committee. He believed that there would have been even more housing allocated to Fox Hills without pushback from some council members including Puza.

“Fox Hills is being asked to take on the burden,” Puza said, “while other parts of the city are asking to unload their burden.”

Vice Mayor Dan O’Brien put the magnitude of the city’s task to create a General Plan, noting the total document is over 2,000 pages in print. He also noted that the city’s RHNA allocation — the number of units required to be added to the housing stock by the state — increased almost 20 times over from 185 units to 3,341 units.

He also supported allowing auto sales in busier mixed-use zones, citing the revenue it brings to cities like Cerritos, which has a high concentration of auto sales at the Cerritos Auto Mall.

“I don’t want to become a Cerritos Auto Mall,” O’Brien said, “but they have great services, and I don’t think they worry much [about] funding.”

Equity was the keystone of Mayor Yasmine-Imani McMorrin’s remarks, arguing that the city had a duty to understand how racial inequality has affected where homeowners were able to break into the city. She explained that she is a resident of Fox Hills, and she echoed the sentiment of her neighbors about density concerns in that area.

“We are able to see that more density is not fair for some neighbors, but we are not willing to make sure it is not the same for Fox Hills,” McMorrin said.

Several votes were taken at the end of the meeting pertaining to the multiple amendments that were presented by the Planning Commission. First, a motion to increase the required meetings to two for all developments passed 4-0, with McMorrin abstaining.

A second motion was to adopt three of the Planning Commission amendments: the increase to dwelling unit capacity in some mixed-use zones, the removal of maximum ADU sizes, and the reinstating of Public Safety as a guiding principle in the document. The motion also included a rejection of an amendment presented that would change the previously mentioned section of Culver Boulevard from mixed-use to a multi-family neighborhood. These efforts failed 2-3 with Vera, Eriksson, and O’Brien voting no. The next motion by O’Brien was to approve the change to Culver Boulevard only, which passed 3-1 with Puza dissenting and McMorrin changing her vote to abstain later in the meeting. A motion was then put forward to approve auto sales as a conditional use, which passed 4-0 with McMorrin abstaining.

Following these amendment votes, motions were made to approve the Plan and the Environmental Impact Report, which passed 4-0 with McMorrin abstaining once again.

Culver City Zoning Map Pulled from the Staff Report.