L.A. County Supervisors approve Westside and South Bay Area plans

At its January 21 meeting, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to move forward with new zoning rules for the unincorporated communities located in the Westside and the South Bay which could accommodate the development of nearly 11,000 new homes.

The Westside Area Plan, includes eight unincorporated areas - Ladera Heights, View Park/Windsor Hills, Marina del Rey, the Ballona Wetlands, unincorporated West Los Angeles, West Fox Hills, Franklin Canyon, and Gilmore Island. The new regulations do not impact zoning Marina del Rey or unincorporated West Los Angeles, which are governed by its own specific plan and under federal jurisdiction, respectively. Likewise, Gilmore Island is being annexed into the City of Los Angeles to facilitate the Television City redevelopment, while hillside areas and open spaces like the Ballona Wetlands and Franklin Canyon remain largely unchanged.

New zoning regulations are spurred by the 2021-2029 Hosing Element, which requires the rezoning or redesignation of multiple properties in the Westside by 2025 to accommodate up to 5,548 new homes. While 62 sites would receive new land use designations, and more than 800 would be rezoned, much of the proposed growth would be accommodated by redevelopment of 10 opportunity sites identified in the plan. In Ladera Heights and View Park/Windsor Hills, these sites include:

• The Ladera Center Mall just west of La Cienega Boulevard along Centinela Avenue, which has a large surface parking lot and low-scale commercial buildings that could be replaced by multifamily residential and mixed-use buildings in a "village center" environment;
• The Wateridge Business Center on Slauson Avenue just east of La Cienega Boulevard, which has parking lots and garages that could be suitable for redevelopment with housing;
• The Slauson-Fairfax Home Depot, which has a large parking area that could accommodate new housing;
• Other underutilized properties at the Slauson-Fairfax intersection;
• The intersection of Slauson and Heatherdale, where vacant land and a hotel could give way to housing;
• Commercial buildings and parking at Slauson and Overhill, which are also envisioned as a housing opportunity site;
• West 54th Street between Keniston and Deane Avenues in View Park, which could support low-scale multifamily residential buildings with ground-floor commercial uses;
• Parking lots along both sides of Vernon Avenue to the west of Crenshaw Boulevard and Leimert Park Station, which could support mixed-use residential buildings;
• The Inglewood Oil Field, which has pockets of land that have not been used for drilling which may accommodate housing and commercial uses while the rest of the area serves as open space.

The tenth site, located in West Fox Hills (also known as Alsace or unincorporated Del Rey), includes a stretch of parcels along the west side of Centinela Avenue to the north of Jefferson Boulevard.  Located directly across the street from the Playa Vista development, this corridor is pitched as an extension of the development pattern to the south, calling for mixed-use residential buildings to replace commercial structures.

The South Bay Area Plan, includes neighborhoods such as Alondra Park/El Camino Village, Del Aire, Hawthorne Island, La Rambla, Lennox, West Carson, Westfield/Academy Hills, and Wiseburn. As with its Westside counterpart, the updated South Bay plan stems from the 2021-2029 Housing Element, and will require the redesignation of 94 properties to accommodate a potential 5,361 residential units.

The final plan is remains substantially the same as what was first rolled out to the community in 2023, targeting certain commercial corridors and neighborhoods near transit stops for additional density. This includes the stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard in the Lennox neighborhood which sits to the north of the C Line and the I-105 Freeway, the west side of Crenshaw Boulevard to the north of El Camino Community College, the west side of Inglewood Boulevard in Wiseburn, and on the parcels surrounding Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in West Carson. Likewise, a more modest transition from single-family zoning to R2 Zone is proposed in the Del Aire area, which sits immediately to the south of Metro's Aviation/LAX Station.

The vote by the Board of Supervisors certifies the environmental impact reports for both plans, and directs County Counsel to begin preparing a final ordinance for adoption at a future date.

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