Recapping RAND's Struggle to Stay in City

By Teresa Rochester

Over the decades millions have driven to Santa Monica's beaches never noticing the towering Cold War structure just south of the pier nor suspecting that within the nondescript building modern culture was quietly being shaped.

It was at the RAND Corporation headquarters (the acronym stands for Research and Development) that email was developed, one of the first computers built and the U.S. space program launched. And it was inside the "think tank" that researcher Daniel Ellsberg photocopied the Pentagon Papers, reportedly walked across the street to the pier and handed the classified documents to a New York Times reporter, hastening the end of the Vietnam War.

But if RAND has had an impact on the course of international affairs, the 1,000 member non-profit firm -- created in 1946 as the research arm of the Army Air Corps (later the Air Force) --, also has quietly contributed to the civic and political fabric of this beach town of 94,000.

"As staff, a lot of times when we embarked on non-traditional types of projects, we turned to RAND," said John Jalili, who retired last year after serving as Santa Monica's city manager for 15 years. "I really think their impact was immeasurable."

Now, after a half century as a conservative bastion in a town long known for its restrictive rent control laws and liberal social policies, RAND's future seems uncertain. After selling 11.3 acres of its 15-acre site to the City for $53 million in April, the think tank finds itself trapped in a land deal as seemingly covert as some of the missions it has embarked on over the years.

"Santa Monica has been our home for more than 50 years," RAND's Executive Vice President Michael Rich said. "Our strong hope is that we will call Santa Monica home for another 50 years."

If RAND is to stay, its mission appears simple - relocate its proposed six-story headquarters from one end of the land it once owned to the small, odd-shaped parcel it retained at the other end. But the think tank's efforts are being challenged by a staunch anti-growth city government and restricted by a development plan that likely will be scrapped once the City decides what to do with its new property across from City Hall.

Last month after a bizarre two-day, 11 hour hearing Santa Monica's new Planning Commission voted to recommend that RAND implement a series of design changes to its proposed 308, 869-square-foot headquarters. The Commission, whose members all were appointed within the past year, argued the 700-foot-long elliptical design of the building was too massive and bucked a pedestrian friendly development plan for the City's Civic Center area.

In their first big test, the commissioners also denied RAND's request to broaden the scope of what is acceptable on the 3.86-acre parcel. Currently the land, nestled in the curve on Main Street across from the County Court House, is limited to a single tenant and restricted to institutional research and development. RAND officials want the use broadened to general institutional use to make way for a future tenant if the think tank needs to downsize or move.

"We don't mean it (the proposed change in use) to signal that we don't intend to stay," said RAND spokeswomen Iao Katagiri. "It's trying to demonstrate to our governing board that we are going about this in a business like manner, that we are covering our bases."

City officials have balked at the zoning change fearing that it gives RAND a way out and paves the way for a large company or companies that will likely increase traffic and add to the downtown congestion.

"They want a long period of time to develop the building and not have it be for RAND but for any office space," said Mayor Ken Genser when the Draft Environmental Impact Report was released two months ago. "This sounds like they just want to go for real estate development. I think that's inappropriate."

Should RAND ever decide to move its headquarters, a number of cities are expected to roll out the welcome mat. When RAND began looking for a new research site - it has offices in New York City; Seattle; Arlington, VA and the Netherlands - it was lobbied by Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura (who paid a personal visit), as well as officials from Atlanta and Miami. In the end RAND opted for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opening offices there in March.

Pittsburgh officials lobbied hard to land RAND, offering the institution a $2.5 million economic incentive package. Think tank officials said the city met all of its criteria, including good and affordable quality of life and proximity to clients and top universities and medical centers.

"We wanted to establish a third major site relatively close to our major clients in a city that would be a rich pool of talent," said Rich, noting the presence of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. "The city is considerably less expensive than Santa Monica or Washington D.C."

RAND's future in Santa Monica, officials say, hinges on the City's approval of a building design uniquely shaped to fit the think tank's needs, a building where hallways are continuous, increasing the chances for employees to bump into each other in the hallway and share ideas. The environmentally friendly building also is deigned to include two libraries (one of them 'classified"), computer modeling simulation workrooms, a shredding room, a cafeteria and a 30,000 foot courtyard kept private for security reasons.

"We're a unique institution and the new building has to meet our functional requirements," Rich said. "If the City Council imposes conditions on its approval that mean that we can't meet those requirements, we will have to abandon the project and find a new home."

The heart of the Planning Commission debate - which one commissioner compared to the dialogue in "Alice in Wonderland" -- centered on the Civic Center Specific Plan, which needed to be amended in order to relocate the proposed structure from the northwestern end of the Civic Center to the southern end. The problem is that the six-year-old plan, which governs land use and which was crafted at a time when RAND still owned all of its property, will likely be scrapped before RAND's new headquarters is built.

Under the plan RAND would have abolished its existing building and developed a replacement facility as part of a massive one-million-square-foot complex that would include up to 350 housing units, park space and retail and office uses. When creating the plan, the City envisioned a grand plaza to bring together a currently disjointed area.

But RAND was forced to abandon those plans after it failed to find a developer during the real estate slump that stretched for much of the 1990s. After entertaining several offers, RAND sold most of its land to the City, whose coffers were filled with earthquake redevelopment funds and whose elected officials had very different plans for the prime real estate.

"To view the building in the context of the specific plan doesn't make any sense," said City Councilman Paul Rosenstein, who co-chaired the working group that crafted the original plan in the early nineties. We need a common sense approach for dealing with this.

"The CCSP was designed for a very different use," Rosenstein said. "The specific plan will have to change drastically in order to accommodate the significant amount of park and open space the city will have to build there."

But several Planning Commissioners argued that the existing plan took four years to craft with extensive public input and was unanimously adopted by the City Council in 1993.

"It is ridiculous what we're trying to do, except that the Specific Plan process was a four-year process," said Planning Commissioner Geraldine Moyle. "It seems to me counter-intuitive to say that none of that plan has meaning due to ownership changes."

"I haven't seen any compelling argument as to why this change needs to be made," said Kelly Olsen, who chairs the commission and who voted for the plan when he was on the council.

Other commissioners argued it was difficult if not impossible to vote on a proposed project with little or no idea of what will surround it.

"I am actually rather surprised and amazed," said Anthony Loui, who is the only architect or planner on the commission. "The process has amazed me for not having a master plan."

The City will decide what will surround RAND's building once the City Council and the Coastal Commission make their decisions on the proposed headquarters. As part of the purchase agreement between the City and RAND, the City is now responsible for taking over the specific plan.

All parties agree that whatever the council decides to do with the project next month, RAND's departure from Santa Monica would be severe blow to the city. After more than half a century RAND and its 1,100 employees have become an integral thread in the community fabric, especially as the think tank's focus turns increasing to domestic issues.

Established at the close of World War II, the institution became independent in 1948 but retained its strong ties to the military establishment, developing weapons and anti-Soviet strategy throughout the Cold War. Even with the demise of the Soviet Union, 55 percent of RAND's business stems from issues of national security, including studies on the threat of cyber-terrorism and improving the Army's Supply Chain.

But RAND's work on domestic issues, which began in the 1950's, has expanded after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The institution - which had revenues of $144 million in 1999 -- has taken on such varied policy issues as injured worker compensations, classroom achievement, the drug wars, health issues and criminal justice.

The firm, which funds some of its research with money from its $85 million endowment, also has produced the most recent demographic profile of the city, recommended ways to increase public involvement and provided models for funding neighborhood projects. City officials also turned to the firm that created the basic infrastructure for the Internet to help Santa Monica become the first city in the country to go online.

One of the top ten employers in Santa Monica, a number of RAND's employees sit on commissions helping shape everything from airport policy to models to overhaul the school district's financial performance.

Whether RAND stays or leaves, there likely won't be a trace of the building where events that shaped the world unfolded. As part of the purchase agreement RAND must demolish its existing buildings, one of which is potentially eligible for national, state and local landmark status.

The building, designed by Los Angeles architect H. Roy Kelley, was constructed between 1953 and 1957, and is hailed in the City's Draft EIR as "an excellent example of the Corporate International Style of architecture or post-war modernism."

But despite the City's newfound preservationist fervor -- two years ago the council blocked the demolition of a 100-year-old, uninhabitable "Shotgun" cottage - the RAND building will likely meet the wrecking ball. The City Council is expected to cite overriding consideration to authorize the building's demise. But not before it gets an earful from preservationists.

"It's a potentially really significant building," said former planning commission chair Ken Breisch, who is the director of programs of historic preservation at USC's School of Architecture. "It has national significance just because of everything that went on in there. It played a central role in the whole unfolding of the Cold War.

"To me it represents an early part of Modernism," Breisch said of the design. "We've only now begun to look at post-war buildings. This building may be breaking new ground because it is a newer building and it's important to look at before it's just dismissed."