Health & Fitness
How to Change Zoning Along Glendale Boulevard (Blog)
Echo Park residents can lobby for changes in the local Community Plan that would lead to changes in zoning along the Glendale Boulevard Corridor.
Echo Park residents decided on the land use designations for Glendale Boulevard. The future land use map the City adopted in August 2004 after community input for this area is on Internet.
The land use designations along Glendale Boulevard up to the Echo Park Lake are commercial and industrial. Zoning is probably compatible with those designations. City approvals of big structures in the Glendale Corridor are consistent with the decisions the Echo Park community made in 2004.
The Eastsider recently contrasted residents’ vision with the reality of on-going development.
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Should community members want to change development in the Corridor for the better, there is a way to do it. Land use changes are not like meteors falling from the sky. Key to implementing residents’ vision is to lobby for changes in the Silver Lake Echo Park Elysian Valley Community Plan.
California State Government Code Section 65300 requires each county and city, including charter cities, to adopt a comprehensive general plan. The general plan may be adopted either as a single document or as a group of related documents organized either by subject matter or by geographic section within the planning area [Government Code Section 65301 (b)].
Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The general plan must be periodically updated to assure its relevance and usefulness. A local government’s general plan is not a “wish list,” but a Constitution for development. The visioning process is fundamental to building a consensus that the Glendale Corridor should not remain blighted.
Echo Park residents will some day have an opportunity to help the City to amend the community plan. The Department of City Planning annually reviews which citywide elements or community plans need to be updated or reviewed.
The City, however, is currently not studying the Echo Park Silver Lake Elysian Heights Community plan. The City has financial problems and has cut staff. Still, there is hope.
The Council, the Planning Commission, or the Director of Planning may propose amendments to the General Plan by geographic area, provided the area has significant social, economic or physical identity. Charter § 555 (a), (b). The Mayor may make recommendations.
The State’s Vehicle Code might pre-empt routing a river through the middle of Echo Park but residents can agitate for changes in land use designations in and around the Glendale Corridor.
