Bringing Back Our Great Park for Future Generations
Frequently Asked Questions
The City of Santa Monica has owned the land since 1926 when it was purchased with a public bond to create a large municipal park. The federal government seized the land for use as an air base during World War II as part of the Douglas Aircraft Company plant that was located where the Santa Monica Business Park and Clover Park are now located.
The City has tried to regain local control over the land and close the airport for over 50 years. In the 1960s the City refused Douglas Aircraft’s request to expand the airport to allow Douglas to manufacture the DC-8 jet airliner. After Douglas completed its relocation to Long Beach in 1975, the City began the process of closing the airport. Because of agreements with the federal government, this process was protracted and was the subject of litigation.
Finally, in 2017, the City and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reached an agreement, the “Consent Decree” [PDF, 8mb], allowing the City to close the airport permanently after December 31, 2028. The City Council then voted to close the airport when it unanimously adopted Resolution 11026 in February 2017 [PDF, 66kb].
No. In connection with the January 28, 2025 City Council Meeting, the City Attorney’s Office prepared a memorandum entitled “Frequently Asked Questions Re Airport Closure and Measure LC” [PDF, 375kb]. It included the following:
Question: Does Council need to take any additional formal action to authorize closure of the Airport?
Answer: “… the decision to close the Airport effective midnight on December 31, 2028, was already made [in 2017], and no further Council action is required to authorize closure of the Airport.”
192 acres per Sasaki, the Santa Monica Airport Conversion (SMAC) Project consultants. Hangars and other built structures cover about 32 of those acres; the remaining 160 acres are open space.
To put this amount of land in context, adjacent Clover Park is 17 acres. The total acreage of all of Santa Monica’s 32 neighborhood parks is about 130 acres. The new park plus Clover Park will be about the same size as Will Rogers State Park in Pacific Palisades (186 acres). To compare the land at the airport to other well-known parks, New York City’s Central Park has 843 acres and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has 1,017.
Prepared by MIG, Inc. and Rios Clementi Hale Studios for the City of Santa Monica, March 2020 Draft
Part of the Santa Monica 2020 Parks and Recreation Master Plan
In 2014, Santa Monica voters passed, by a 60-40 margin, Measure LC and defeated by the same margin Measure D, the aviation industry’s attempt to wrest airport control from the City. The passage of Measure LC modified the City Charter to state that:
If all or part of the Airport land is permanently closed to aviation use, no new development of that land shall be allowed until the voters have approved limits on the uses and development that may occur on the land. However, this section shall not prohibit the City Council from approving the following on Airport land that has been permanently closed to aviation use: the development of parks, public open spaces, and public recreational facilities; and the maintenance and replacement of existing cultural, arts and education uses.
This means that the City Charter now protects the airport land from development and other non-LC compliant uses. The public must now decide how the approximately 192 acres of airport land will transition into the Great Park. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to repurpose an enormous and unique land parcel as our largest park, restoring the City’s available park space to pre-World War II levels. The Great Park Coalition urges you to participate in the current planning process.
An “LC-compliant Great Park” is a term meaning that the GPC aims to achieve a Great Park as described by the language of the Measure LC City Charter Amendment, which states that new development on the airport land is prohibited post-closure “except for the development of parks, public open spaces, and public recreational facilities; and the maintenance and replacement of existing cultural, arts and education uses.”
Although the Measure LC City Charter Amendment contemplates, of necessity, that this scope of charter-permitted uses could be modified by a future vote of the people via a ballot measure amending the City Charter, the GPC uses the term “an LC-compliant Great Park” to mean achieving a settled-upon community-vetted and Council-approved future plan for disposition of the land post-SMO closure that does not require a ballot initiative to amend the City Charter.
IMPORTANT: Furthermore, as the City Attorney’s January 28, 2025 memorandum [PDF, 268kb] made clear, many commonly accepted park uses favored in the SMAC Project survey results, including some revenue-generating uses, that were earlier miscategorized as non-compliant in surveys, can be made LC-compliant simply with zoning changes alone.
What is known at present about how SMO was used for emergency response and firefighting during the January 2025 fires?
On January 7, 2025, wildfires destroyed huge swaths of Pacific Palisades, Malibu and soon thereafter significant portions of Altadena. This was a great tragedy and ultimately firefighters and firefighting resources were mobilized from all across the western United States and even from Canada (SuperScooper Quebec) and Mexico. Although at times, the high winds prevented the use of aerial resources (both fixed-wing and helicopters), these resources ultimately were crucial to containing the damage. What role did SMO play?
Cal Fire Unit Chief Shane Littlefield at a community meeting in February 2025 explained the role of SMO in fighting the Palisades Fire, noting that Cal Fire based its operations out of Camarillo Airport from Tuesday, January 7, 2025 through Saturday, January 11, 2025. Strong winds on January 11, 2025 required Cal Fire to relocate the 30 or so aircraft and helicopters using Camarillo so Cal Fire contacted SMO about relocation. Five helicopters out of 30 were moved that day to SMO, with 8 more relocated to park there on January 12, 2025.
Per Chief Littlefield, SMO was not utilized for active firefighting during the January 2025 fires; response instead was conducted from the Van Nuys and Camarillo airports.
Will the SMAC Project planning process for a Great Park include consideration and provision of emergency response capabilities?
Yes. Santa Monica’s Adopted Safety Element requires this. The Safety Element, adopted by Council in February 2025, notes that “[t]he airport [conversion] planning process will need to take into consideration the need to support the City’s emergency operations, such as emergency supply storage, communications control, and other emergency evacuation and response capabilities.” See, Adopted Safety Element, p. 2-53.
Further, at the January 28, 2025 City Council Meeting Council Members unanimously directed City Staff to conduct an After Action Review across all City departments to accurately capture lessons learned during the City’s response to the Palisades Fire and to better prepare for the next natural disaster or emergency crisis. City Staff will return to Council within 12 months with a public report, improvement action items, and implementation plan. The City’s Chief Resilience Officer Lindsay Call has confirmed that a review of SMO use will be a part of the After Action Review.
Should the conceptual design of an LC-compliant Great Park (which was directed by City Council on July 8, 2025) include large public and open spaces that can also be used for emergency response in the event of disasters like wildfires or earthquakes?
Yes. Per the Safety Element, Santa Monica faces significant large-scale disaster risks, including tsunamis, earthquakes, and fires. The planning of the Great Park presents a unique opportunity to create modern, world-class recreational and open spaces that both serve the community’s daily needs and enhance the City’s resilience during emergencies.
By providing essential open spaces and infrastructure, the park can support emergency responders, residents, and volunteers, thus increasing the park’s utility in times of crisis and setting a positive example for cities worldwide.
The January 2025 Palisades Fire highlighted the need for flexible open and recreational spaces, as residents evacuated to facilities like the Westwood Recreation Center and Stoner Recreation Center, while first responders utilized the Annenberg Community Center and the Santa Monica Business Park, including its large, flat surface parking lots. Basic needs included sleeping accommodations and temporary showers, and firefighters additionally required staging areas for equipment, trucks, and helicopters. The beach parking lots from Santa Monica to Zuma were used, as well as other open parking lots and vacant buildings.
Planning with all of these response needs in mind will ensure that the Great Park is ready to support Santa Monica and the region during any future emergency.
Cal Fire Unit Chief Shane Littlefield emphasized that Cal Fire requires open space not airports per se to fight fires, which adequately can be provided with a large open field or other unobstructed flat open space.
With a large open lawn as its centerpiece, the Great Park would provide that open space for Cal Fire and other emergency use. Other open and public spaces in the Great Park would offer shelter and gathering spots for residents or other evacuees, plus storage spaces for post-emergency recovery supplies and materials.
Until the City, in close collaboration with the community, decides on what the Great Park will be, we will not know the estimated cost. But there are three things to keep in mind.
The first is that the most expensive part of building a park in a developed urban area like Santa Monica has already been paid for: the land itself. There is no conceivable way that Santa Monica or even the County could come up with the funds to buy these 192 acres today.
The second is that the airport brings in about $20 million in gross revenue annually, which goes into the Airport Fund to sustain SMO operations and maintenance. The City of Santa Monica receives none of that revenue. Importantly, over 82% of that revenue is from non-aviation sources and non-aviation revenue is reasonably expected to increase after airport closure. This substantial sum will only become available to the City once the airport closes, and the net proceeds from that non-aviation revenue (estimated at $6-7 million currently) may be a significant source of funding for park maintenance as well as revenue bonds to help build the Great Park.
The third point is that great parks are not built all at once, and that over time there will be many other possibilities for funding, including philanthropic gifts and public funds available for environmental restoration and recreation.
Many of the existing buildings are currently being leased to non-aviation businesses, and those uses are anticipated to continue after airport closure. Of the nearly $20 million a year the airport receives in revenue — money that is locked into an FAA-mandated Airport Fund until the airport closes — 82% of the hangar and office building lease revenue is currently generated by non-aviation businesses. The future of buildings currently being used for aviation purposes is part of the park planning process.
There are some voices in Santa Monica saying that housing should be built on the airport site when the airport closes. Is this a good idea?
The GPC believes that park space and housing are two sides of the same coin that make up a “great” city. All great cities, including or even especially the most populous cities, have great parks including, usually, one beloved “great park” that is the capstone of the park system. It is that park space that allows for denser housing while maintaining quality of life. Santa Monica should be a “great” city but at only 1.4 acres of parkland and open space per 1000 residents [PDF, 7mb] at the City’s current 92,000 population level it is severely “park poor” by all Los Angeles County, State of California, and national measures.
The situation is magnified when one considers Santa Monica as part of the Westside of L.A. The Los Angeles Countywide Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment (2016) deems Santa Monica, Mar Vista (.5 acres/1000), and Venice (.9 acres/1000) all areas of “high park acre need.” Los Angeles County’s Park and Equity Facts page references an “‘accepted standard’ of four acres of parks for every 1,000 people.”
By way of context, the Quimby Act, the California law that requires developers to pay fees or dedicate land for parks and recreation, ties payment of development impact fees to a standard of at least 3 acres of parks and open space per 1000 residents. The original standard was 5 acres per 1000 residents when enacted in 1965, although the exact amount could vary depending on the density of the development and local regulations.
The 2023 National Recreation and Park Association Agency Performance Review [PDF, 5mb] (NRPA Performance Review) on page 7 reported that the average jurisdiction with a population size similar to Santa Monica’s offers almost 11 park and open space acres per 1000 residents. Santa Monica’s 1.4 acres/1000 residents places our City at the bottom of the lowest quartile of park acreage offered to city dwellers across the nation (NRPA Performance Review, page 8).
Sasaki (the SMAC Project consultants) concluded that the total airport land is 192 acres rather than the 227 acres that has been reported in the past. Of that 192 acres, only about 160 acres are undeveloped open space (i.e., without buildings). When those 160 acres become the Great Park, which will add about 1.7 park acres per 1000 residents, Santa Monica still will be able to offer only about 3.1 total acres per 1000 residents at current population levels. Given that this is the last large open space available in Santa Monica (and probably on the whole Westside), and that the City is adding and will continue to add density and population in the future, the park acreage-to-residents ratio will likely fall back into the high-need range.
To summarize, because restoring the Great Park at the airport site is the only opportunity Santa Monica will have to approach the county, state, and national recommended park space minimums, the GPC believes that the site becoming a park is just as essential to achieving a healthy, livable, inclusive, equitable, desirable City as is building housing itself, which can and will be constructed in other parts of the City.
Inasmuch as the airport site is the only place in Santa Monica and the surrounding areas where the park space side of the coin can ever be realized in an appreciable, meaningful way, dedicating this land to park space actually is essential FOR housing, but not AS housing.
While the foundation is a member of the Great Park Coalition, the GPC, as its name implies, is a much wider organization than the foundation, bringing under one umbrella many organizations and individuals that support building the Great Park.
No. Commercial aircraft flying into LAX from the north pass over Santa Monica at about 7,000 feet on their landing approach. The reason for this is because of (1) the aircraft’s rate of descent and (2) its landing path which is largely driven by the east-west orientation of the LAX runways. Aircraft coming in from the north do not head straight into LAX. They come in from the coast over Santa Monica, head east over Downtown LA, and then make a U-turn and merge into the westbound landing approach to LAX.
The descent into LAX follows a “Continuous Descent Approach.” Aircraft remain at their normal cruising altitude of about 35,000 feet to save fuel in the thinner air until they near the airport. With engines idling and the help of gravity, aircraft descend gradually and smoothly, using less fuel to minimize costs. The standard Continuous Descent Approach is along a 3-degree decline, and aircraft are at least 25 miles away from touchdown when they pass over Santa Monica at about 7,000 feet.
No. Building height limits around Santa Monica Airport are set by local city zoning in both Santa Monica and Los Angeles and are not determined by aviation requirements.
For 31 years, embraced by the mountains and Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica has led on sustainability, renowned for its aspirations and accomplishments, influencing and inspiring cities across the state, nation, and world. With its first in the nation Sustainable City Plan in 1994 and the establishment of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, the City embarked, with engaged citizens and active businesses, on a path of establishing progressive policies and programs guided by principles and goals that could safeguard our natural ecosystems that support life interwoven with the civic, economic and cultural endeavors that support a thriving, diverse community.
Growing food and habitat in the City’s community gardens, which had begun in 1976, anticipated sustainability goals and practices. The City’s Open Space Element [PDF, 5mb], approved by Council in 1997, includes the goal of promoting biodiversity in and expanding the city’s gardens plus further developing the City’s community gardens inventory.
In 2000, the City became the first municipality to procure 100% renewable energy for government operations. By 2013, following continuous updates and assessments in concert with Council priorities to uphold Santa Monica’s sustainability commitments, and a robust youth engagement, the Sustainability Plan was codified as the Sustainability Rights Ordinance (SRO) [PDF, 675kb], which recognized “both the rights of natural communities and ecosystems within Santa Monica to exist, thrive and evolve and the rights of the individual human beings that make up the City of Santa Monica to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.”
A model for other cities, the SRO is now part of Santa Monica’s Municipal Code: Sustainability Code. Santa Monica adopted the Santa Monica Bike Action Plan and set a course to re-invent the community as a nationally recognized multi-modal city that works for all roadway users. The 2019 adoption of the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan set forth ambitious goals, boosted by the City’s early participation in the Clean Power Alliance and the opening of City Hall East, the world’s first government edifice with “Living Building” standards.
For its long term exemplary efforts and achievements, the City of Santa Monica has been named a LEED Platinum City and a Carbon Disclosure Project Climate Action Leader. Addressing the urgency of the climate crisis and deepening progress on sustainability, the Council reaffirmed in 2023 the Sustainability and Connections Priority, an enduring commitment for present and future generations.
The conversion of the Santa Monica Airport to a Great Park offers Santa Monicans the most significant opportunity in the history of the City to reaffirm and further implement 30 years of forward-looking sustainability goals, actions, and leadership as set forth in Article 12. Sustainability of the City of Santa Monica Municipal Code of Ordinances (Article 12.01.020), which states:
“The City of Santa Monica Sustainability Code is created and exists for the purpose of codifying Santa Monica’s commitment to achieving sustainability by among other things: (a) restoring, protecting and preserving our natural environment and all of its components and communities including, but not limited to, the air, water, soil, and climate upon which all living things depend; (b) creating and promoting sustainable systems of food production and distribution, energy production and distribution, transportation, waste disposal, and water supply; and (c) to the full extent legally possible, subordinating the short-term, private, financial interests of corporations and others to the common, long-term interest of achieving environmental and economic sustainability.”
* In this FAQ, environmental remediation refers to identifying and addressing any contamination in soil or groundwater so the land meets health, safety, and environmental standards for future public use.
While the full extent of any remediation that may be required following SMO closure is not yet known, steps are being taken to evaluate what remediations, if any, will need to take place. The City has already conducted a first phase of environmental site assessment, and the associated 2024 report (Phase 1 Report) is available on the SMAC Project website.
While final remediation of any environmental issues will need to wait until SMO closure, some remediation has already begun — on November 18, 2025 (City Council Agenda Item 4.B.), the Santa Monica City Council approved the removal of four underground fuel storage tanks at an estimated cost of $400,000.
This work is being funded through the Airport Fund, the enterprise fund that supports the operations and maintenance of SMO. The tanks are double-hulled, and testing conducted to date has identified no evidence of contamination in the surrounding soil or groundwater.
As described in the Phase 1 Report, it is important to note that the Douglas Aircraft Company manufacturing facility did not operate on what is now the airport land that will become the park. The plant operated where the privately-owned Santa Monica Business Park is today. The airport now occupies the site of our City’s original Great Park, which had been a barley field purchased by the City in 1926 with a parks bond.
The existing Airport Park was built on airport land in the 1990s without significant remediation issues, and it’s not anticipated that there will be any major environmental issues that would prevent building the Great Park. Based on past experience, the cost of any remediations that are required will likely be borne by the businesses, or their successors, that caused any contaminations, or by the Airport Fund.
For instance, in 2012, The Boeing Company, the successor to Douglas, agreed to pay the City of Santa Monica $39.5 million to address groundwater contamination associated with former Douglas manufacturing facilities in Santa Monica, including sites located near SMO. This obligation was memorialized in a settlement agreement, which resolved the City’s claims related to historical groundwater contamination and provided funding for investigation and remediation activities.
Under the settlement, Boeing agreed to conduct and fund remediation activities pursuant to oversight and cleanup requirements imposed by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, including compliance with existing Cleanup and Abatement Orders issued under the California Water Code governing the investigation and remediation of contaminated groundwater.
It’s also important to note that Boeing currently pays for remediations at the Santa Monica Business Park, where the factory was located.
In sum, while as a matter of policy the SMO site will be thoroughly studied for any environmental contamination issues, there is no reason to believe that any such issues will prevent the building of the Great Park.
No. Beaches and parks are completely different eco-systems. Beaches, though lovely and desirable, provide none of the same climate resilience and recreational benefits that parks do. Beaches are essential ecosystems, but they do not cool neighborhoods, intercept runoff, or provide daily respite from heat in the way inland parks do.
In contrast, urban parks deliver services that beaches generally cannot including tree canopy and shade that reduce urban heat island effects in a built environment; stormwater capture and groundwater recharge; air quality improvements from trees and plants that sequester carbon and release oxygen; and habitat corridors inland from the coast. Green urban parks offer trees and forests that, in addition to cleaning the air, help filter water and protect the watershed. Green urban parks offer opportunities for community gardening, rewilding native landscapes, and space for many sports that simply cannot be played in sand. Parks provide the essential yin of green open space to balance the yang of a denser built environment of taller buildings and larger population over time.
Accordingly, it is essential to add significant new green inland park space in Santa Monica, despite the City’s proximity to Santa Monica State Beach for many reasons –
- Santa Monica, even with Santa Monica State Beach, is dramatically park-poor at our current population (1.5 acres of parks/open space per 1,000 residents). The commonly accepted urban planning standard for health and well-being is 5 acres per 1,000 residents.
- Santa Monica’s park acres-to-residents ratio puts us near the very bottom among both California cities and cities nationwide.
- Even compared to peer beach cities with popular large beaches like ours, our open and green park acreage is extremely low as illustrated by the graph below.
- Plus, even if beach acreage was included in our parks-to-residents ratio, it would still fall well short of the accepted 5 acres/1,000 planning standard – Santa Monicans would have access to only about 4.1 acres of open space per 1,000 residents.
As background, the City of Santa Monica does not own Santa Monica State Beach, which is largely owned by the State of California and is designated as a state park. The City does, however, manage much of it under a joint operating agreement with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Los Angeles County also has some management control of Santa Monica State Beach and the California Coastal Commission likewise is tasked with significant control and oversight.
Santa Monica State Beach is approximately 245 acres of sand that is generally public land for public use, although some private developments like hotels and beach clubs control portions of the beach for guest or member-only use.
Due to climate change and anticipated sea-level rise, Southern California is predicted in several models to lose 24-75% of its sandy beaches by 2100 without intervention. Accordingly, since 2016 and with permission from the California Coastal Commission, the City has engaged in beach dunes restoration work in partnership with The Bay Foundation. To date, about 51 acres of sand have been or are approved to be “re-duned”, creating a barrier to high waters that observers at the University of California-Santa Barbara have concluded shows great promise for beach resilience.
Ironically, this important climate resilience work is impacting the amount of flat, open beach acreage available to Santa Monica residents and visitors for beach enjoyment and recreation, a loss so far of 20%, which highlights the need to anticipate a future with significantly reduced recreational and open beach space and to create significant new non-coastal recreational and open spaces farther inland.
The climate change situation continues to worsen and accelerate each year.
That could cut Santa Monica’s accessible beach area from 194 acres (that’s 245 acres minus the 51 acres of dune restoration area) down to just 25-60 extremely crowded acres, or less, by the end of the century.
If beach erosion predictions continue to prove true, the future Great Park’s undiminished 192 acres then would be the only large accessible natural open space within the City and Westside region. With an opportunity like this before us as a community, it is essential to think long term. If we don’t, future generations will justly condemn us as the generation that failed them by thinking small when we should have thought big.
A historical note: Santa Monica State Beach 100 years ago was much narrower, rockier, and more crowded than the beach we enjoy today, which was cleverly engineered by our City and Los Angeles County to become larger to accommodate and encourage more tourism. But while the City and County were able to engineer a much wider, sandier beach during the first half of the 20th Century, sea level rise prevents the same solution for beach loss today, hence the City’s dune creation work. Learn more in this fascinating new book “Sand Rush” about the history of Santa Monica State Beach by history professor Elsa Devienne of Northumbria University.
There is no question that homelessness has proven to be one of the most intractable challenges, not only for the Los Angeles region, but also for California and much of the rest of the country. Santa Monica has not been an exception, as a homelessness crisis has been recognized here since at least the 1980s. The City of Santa Monica has implemented extensive programs over the years to help people who are unhoused access housing and supportive services. At the same time, the City has enacted laws intended to balance compassion with efforts to reduce the impacts of homelessness on the community at large. Yet homelessness remains a local and regional challenge.
As public places, some parks in the city have at times been places where unhoused people spend time. However, this has certainly not been the case with all parks in Santa Monica. In general, neighborhood parks away from downtown have avoided significant impacts related to homelessness. These beloved parks have consistently been places where residents and visitors gather to enjoy themselves and participate in recreational activities. In particular, the parks closest to the Great Park – Clover Park and Airport Park – are in active daily use. They serve the community as places for sports, picnics, passive recreation, and the many other benefits that well-designed and well-used parks provide.
It is worth noting that under new City Manager Oliver Chi, Santa Monica’s new coordinated approach to homelessness will hopefully create conditions under which all public spaces can succeed. This approach pairs outreach and supportive services with active management, safety, maintenance, and regular programming. Investments in cleanliness, infrastructure, and daily use should help ensure that new parks remain welcoming, well used, and accessible to residents and visitors alike, while homelessness is addressed through housing and services.
Hopefully one day our society will find lasting ways for the root causes of homelessness to be addressed with dignity and care. Until then, homelessness may remain a social challenge, but concerns about it should not prevent the creation of the Great Park that Santa Monica needs and deserves.