PLAYA VISTA ‘THE VILLAGE'
THE ISSUE
When Playa Vista was established on the Westside of
Los Angeles, it was the first new community in that
area in more than 50 years. With its completion, the innovative mixed use
community proposed to balance critically needed residential,
commercial and retail space. In accordance with Playa
Vista's master development plan, the community would create
a place to live, work and play while protecting the
open space and habitat on Los Angeles' Westside.
With the first phase of development approved and almost
completed, Playa Vista needed approval of its second
and final phase from the Los Angeles City Council and
four subcommittees. Facing strong opposition to continued
development, Playa Vista hired Burnside & Associates to design and implement a community outreach
plan that would target and recruit supporters to actively
participate in winning the approval of the Los Angeles
City Council to move forward with Phase II, The Village.
THE SOLUTION
In order to garner sufficient support for The Village,
Burnside & Associates created and designed a community outreach
plan that built a coalition of involved participants.
The plan included a grassroots program to identify,
educate and motivate supporters of the project as it
moved forward with the Los Angeles City Council approval
process by encouraging them to voice their support
through letters, phone calls, and attend City Council
hearings.
Burnside & Associates:
- Created an easily accessible and informative state
of the art ‘Village' web page. This innovative tool captured supporters
and allowed them to create personalized letters to
send to targeted council members.
- Elected 6 members to the Westchester neighborhood council to
create a Playa Vista majority.
- Designed and carried out a comprehensive Community
Outreach Plan. The program focused on a combination
of face-to-face and phone contacts to stimulate a community target
of 5,000 supporters of this development project. The program
increased supporters from 800 to 5,142 people.
- Established the Friends of the Village Committee, a
residents committee at Playa Vista which recruited
and organized Playa Vista residents. Building captains
were designated and interaction and recruitment with
neighbors was conducted for each hearing.
- Created a master file to maximize our resources by clearly designating
which of our supporters were willing to attend or speak
at a hearing, write a letter, or call their elected
official.
Delivered more than 1,000 supporters to four hearings and over 300 supporters to the Los Angeles City Council meeting.
- Organized letter writing campaigns that generated 600 support letters to each committee member and city
council member prior to the hearing dates.
THE RESULT
Los Angeles City Council gave its approval to The Village
at Playa Vista with visible support from Playa Vista
residents, with neighbors from surrounding communities
and despite outspoken opposition. In addition, the
four subcommittees the project was presented to, prior
to the City Council, all gave their backing. Burnside
& Associates' community outreach program provided Playa Vista with
a pool of over 5,000 supporters who were critical in the approval process.
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