History of Santa Monica, California - 1990s

1990s

The 1990s saw continued development in Santa Monica. The Promenade caught on. Colorado Place, Water Garden, and other nearby office developments on the east side of town attracted MGM, Sony, Symantec, and other corporations. The Shutters Hotel was the first of several new hotels built between the pier and Pico Boulevard. One of them, the Loews, is on the site of the long forgotten Arcadia Hotel. The Casa Del Mar returned to its former glory as a luxury hotel in 1999 after a reported $60 million renovation by the owners of the Shutters Hotel. Even the comparatively-dowdy Miramar Hotel found new prominence with the many visits of President Bill Clinton.

In 1994, an old rail station was transformed by the city into Bergamot Station, a collection of art galleries that has become a center of art exhibition and retailing.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake caused the loss of many residences and historic buildings, particularly on the north side of the city. Other notable damage: St. John's hospital came close to collapsing; Honda of Santa Monica's parking structure pancaked crushing numerous cars. In all, 100 buildings were condemned outright, including 3,100 apartment units, while far more suffered repairable damage.

The Evening Outlook, which had been purchased by the Copley Press newspaper chain in 1983, was closed in 1998 after 123 years of reporting. It reportedly had 20,000 paid subscription at the time of the closure.

MTBE, a major gasoline additive (10% by volume), was discovered in the city's water wells in August 1995. The MTBE was found almost by accident since it was not on the list of known contaminants and acceptable level had not been set. The city waters engineers had to research the hazard and they raised the alarm. Within a year all five wells were closed, leading to the loss of 45% of the city's water supply. One well had a concentration of 600 parts per billion, while another rose from 14 parts per billion to 490 parts per billion within a year. The California EPA guidelines now call for no more than 35 parts per billion. The city's well field is in the Charnock Sub-Basin, a small aquifer in Mar Vista, Los Angeles that both Santa Monica and Culver City draw upon. To maintain supply to customers Santa Monica was forced to purchase water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) at a cost of over $1.1 million per year. Cleanup of the site is ongoing at a current cost of $3 million per year, paid for by the responsible parties, principally: Shell Oil Company, Chevron, and Exxon. Following this discovery other water districts began testing that revealed tens of thousands of MTBE pollution cases across the United States.

The state of California enacted a law, effective January 1, 1999, that overrode Santa Monica's rent control ordinance by mandating vacancy decontrol. Landlords were reported to have raised rents so high that units remained vacant, requiring them to lower their rents to more marketable levels. Rent controls remained on inhabited units, leading to stories of landlords harassing existing tenants in order to make them leave so that higher rents could be charged.