Politics & Government
Centrum Sunset Gets Reprieve; Could Come Back without David Barton Gym
City Council votes to give the Centrum Sunset project, which it denied in April, a chance to come back with revised plans for a scaled down building that would have less video signage and no David Barton gym as a tenant.
The Centrum Sunset project may not be completely dead after all as the City Council gave it a last-minute reprieve of sorts at its Monday night meeting.
the three-story, 47,000-square-foot building set to be built on the old Tower Records lot at 8801 Sunset Blvd. An upscale David Barton boutique gym and spa was set to be the main tenant.
Area residents strongly opposed the project due to the video signage on the building and the estimated 1,200 car trips a day the project would produce. Councilmembers agreed that amount of traffic was simply too much of an impact on the residential areas and voted 4-1 to deny it.
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The Council was scheduled to finalize that denial at Monday night’s meeting as part of the consent calendar, but a last minute appeal changed that plan.
Representatives for Centrum Sunset asked the Council to continue the project rather than deny it. By asking for the continuation, Centrum Sunset was asking to Council to give them a chance to revise the project.
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Exact details haven’t been worked out, but the revised project would be scaled down. It would have less video signage, no billboard and no David Barton Gym as a tenant. Essentially, the things to which residents were most opposed would be removed.
The Council had mixed feelings about this request.
Councilmember John D’Amico lauded the architecture and said it would be a shame to loose a building that would stand out so prominently along the Sunset Strip.
Meanwhile Councilmember John Heilman said, “We voted to deny it. It seems unfair to revive it at 1 o’clock in the morning when none of the residents who opposed it are here.”
(The item was one of the last things the Council dealt with during its marathon six-and-a-half-hour meeting that ended shortly after 1 a.m.)
The Council voted 3-2 to approve the continuation. Heilman and Mayor Pro Tem Abbe Land voted against the continuation.
Centrum Sunset agreed to hold neighborhood meetings to get input from the community about the revised plans before coming back to the Council in the summer.
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