DEAR WEHO: Don’t extend the 8920 development agreement

Dear Mayor Erickson, Vice Mayor Byers, and Councilmembers Heilman, Meister, and Shyne — 

Please do not approve the development agreement for the 8920 Sunset Boulevard Project (formerly known as the Arts Club) as currently proposed.  The public benefits package should be revised, and monetary contributions adjusted upward in this long-gestating project which appears as Item C.1. on your agenda for October 7, 2024. 

While the agreement provides support for the arts, you should also address the affordable housing crisis by enhancing the development agreement.  Here’s how:

1.  Item 3 on Page 3 of the staff report states: “Additional $1,000,000 cash benefit payment to the City, in which at least 25% shall be allocated to the Sunset Boulevard Beautification Fund and at least 25% shall be allocated to the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund (Section 4.1.2).”

You should require more than a paltry $250,000 for affordable housing given that:

There is a housing crisis in the State.  This project gobbled up a precious parcel of residential land (previously zoned R4B on Hilldale) that was then turned into commercial land so that the promised Arts Club development could be larger and denser. 

That original residentially zoned parcel could have been used to develop a 4 to 5-story apartment or condominium building, with inclusionary affordable units included.  But the concept of the Arts Club building prevailed, and the city lost an opportunity for residential housing development – land that could have been identified as available for meeting the city’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment.

2.  This constantly evolving project has now seen the disappearance of what would have been the second installment of the Charles Dickens inspired Arts Club of London. Also now evaporated like the Cheshire Cat are the project’s original 10 private club guestrooms.  

These have been eliminated in favor of the project having an additional 13,258 square feet of office space, but office space projects are floundering.  Witness the French Marketplace Office project, approved but not being built.  Is there really a pressing need for more office space?

Like the recently approved Viper Room project that includes both hotel rooms and much-needed residential units, let us require this developer to provide housing units instead of 13,258 square feet of additional office space.  It looks like 20 small units, each about 650 square feet, could be provided – for the workers who tend to the new building or even for the artists who may need an affordable place to live while they create their art.  

Let us be creative here and ask for more on behalf of housing needs in the city of West Hollywood and the future of the iconic Sunset Strip.

–Victor Omelczenko, 23-year West Hollywood Resident