All four projects / items mentioned in this article were approved by the Planning Commission, none were split decisions. All four projects/ items in this article were reviewed by city staff with a recommendation for approval in the staff report presented to the city council. At lease one of the staff reports stated that ‘failure to approve’ could put the city at risk of a lawsuit. “
The impetus for this article is actually quite interesting. On the campaign trail, I encountered both support and anger towards Councilmember Lauren Meister. One resident asked me if I liked Meister, and when I answered yes, they said, “You lost my vote.” I asked why, and the resident of West Hollywood West went off on the Builder’s Remedy, saying she did not protect their neighborhood. Meister had voted to delay the housing element. It took a year before a newly elected John Heilman spoke up.
At a previous City Council meeting, Meister voted against the Wetherly Palms, a 100% affordable housing project on Doheny. It was hard for me to imagine that vote. In 2017 or 2018, Sam Borelli came before the homeless subcommittee of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to garner support for the idea of Wetherly Palms. Six or so years later, after many meetings with the public, the West Hollywood Housing Corp, and stakeholders, Meister still cast her vote against that project.
The Viper Room vote at the last Council meeting also saw Meister on the “NO” side of that development. That project has been on the drawing board since 2018, with numerous meetings held. The final version was scaled down 50 feet in height and incorporated all the Council and community input from the previous two meetings. All the Councilmembers stated they had “met with the developer” — in other words, opportunities to get the project right and raise concerns. This project, with 76 rental units and 16 affordable housing units, exceeded the city’s 20% affordable housing mandate. Along with Wetherly Palms, this project offered the most affordable housing units to come before the City Council this year, but Meister voted against both.
However, I wasn’t convinced to write this story or question Meister’s stance on development. I generally support her nit-picking when it helps improve a project. But if nit-picking means no project at all, then we’re left with holes in the ground for years. Then I recalled the Palms Project. The Palms Project had been approved by the City Council a two years back in a close 3-2 vote. It is the first new senior and assisted living complex to be built in West Hollywood in years. I searched our pages under “The project had been approved by the Planning Commission and appealed to the City Council.
I searched Palm Project right in our search bar and it began…
“Meister began the deliberations by laying out a case to support the appeal. D’Amico followed. But then, in a stunning 3-2 vote, the younger generation of West Hollywood’s City Council pushed back against neighborhood opposition and paved the way for construction of a new assisted living facility for senior citizens on Palm Avenue.”
These are some of the most important projects to come before the city council in the past two years. You can decide for yourself if Lauren is anti-development or pro-development. All I can say is there is a pattern here and another NO vote is not a highway to building more housing, or more affordable housing.
