Height Fight
Stack 32 apartments on a small lot near the E Line. Three rounds, three parking rules. Every stall you owe is either a hole in the ground or one more floor for Sunny next door to look at.
Santa Monica’s Height Fight Is a Parking Fight
The argument over how tall new buildings should be is really an argument over how many cars each apartment is built to hold. Andrew Sachs, PTMP, on the stall count as the real lever.
Game model, simplified: about 16 stalls a parking level and up to four apartments a floor on a 7,500-square-foot lot; $73,000 an underground stall and $52,000 above ground (UCLA ITS, February 2026, 17-city averages, land excluded); about 11.5 feet a story. Move-in day gives 32 households 34 cars, matching Census estimates for renters near Santa Monica’s E Line stations (ACS 2019 to 2023: about 1.06 cars per household, three in four with one car or none). Sunny, Sunny’s street (room for about 8 cars), the dig finds and the pelican are fiction.