Santa Monica Residents need to Band Together to Oppose the "Lincoln Center" Project

NOMA joins The Friends of Sunset Park (FOSP) in urging residents to attend a ZOOM developer-hosted meeting this Thursday, February 17th at 7pm to discuss a very big project on the Gelson’s site at Lincoln and Ocean Park Blvd. Weighing in at almost 60% larger than Santa Monica Place, this proposal would build 521 apartments, only 10% affordable, in ten buildings up to five stories.

In spite of its misleading name, “Lincoln Center,” this isn’t going to be a community center at all. The neighborhood serving retail will be sharply scaled back to a grocery store the size of a 7-Eleven and a café.

If this huge project gets approved as proposed, it could set a precedent, and similar projects might be built on large parcels at:

- Wilshire & 14th (Von's/Rite Aid), - Wilshire & Centinela (Armstrong), - Montana & 9th (Pavilions), - Cloverfield & Broadway (DMV), - Cloverfield & Olympic (Ralph's), - Cloverfield & Pico (Whole Foods -- recently purchased by a European investment firm), and Pico & 24th (Rite Aid)

Historically, when residents have mounted enough opposition to wildly out-of-scale and environmentally unsound projects, developers back off or modify their plans. Residents united to stop the three 21-story towers at Santa Monica Place. We stopped the massive Hines project on Olympic and 26th, and more recently the equally ill-conceived development proposed at 4th/5th and Arizona.

No matter where you live in Santa Monica, you will feel the impact of this project. And if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. Now is the time to speak up.

Zoom link to Thursday 2/17/22 meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82892453793