Excavation in Mar Vista & Venice
Venice was built on marshland that Abbot Kinney drained by digging canals in 1905. State maps put most of it in a liquefaction zone, and about half of it lies in the City’s Methane Zone or Buffer Zone. Neighboring Mar Vista, annexed in 1927 and built up heavily from the 1950s to the 1970s, has almost none of those mapped hazards.
Abbot Kinney dug several miles of canals to drain the marshes when he founded Venice in 1905, and Los Angeles annexed it in 1926. The state’s liquefaction mapping now covers around four-fifths of the neighborhood. That mapping is drawn where groundwater has historically stood less than 40 feet below the surface, so on a Venice lot a soils engineer’s groundwater notes can decide how deep a footing goes and whether an excavation may need dewatering. We plan foundation digs around those findings rather than a standard depth.
About half of Venice falls in the City’s Methane Zone or its Buffer Zone, with the zone proper covering the larger part. The rule applies to new buildings and to new paved areas, so an ADU pad, a garage slab or even a new paved court can bring a lot under it. Site testing sets the mitigation level before the slab design is final, and the excavation follows that design. Any utility trench that crosses under a mitigated slab has to be coordinated with it as well. Add the coastal zone on top, and a Venice job can carry three separate reviews before the first scoop of soil.
Inland, Mar Vista was known as Ocean Park Heights from 1904 until 1924, joined Los Angeles in 1927 as its 70th community, and filled in mostly from the 1950s through the 1970s. The state liquefaction and landslide maps and the City’s methane map show no designation there, so the soils questions that dominate a Venice job mostly fall away. One thing is worth confirming parcel by parcel: whether LADBS treats the lot as part of a hillside grading area, which ZIMAS shows. The overlay that can shape site work is the Gregory Ain Mar Vista Tract HPOZ, where exterior work on the houses and their yards goes through preservation review.
North along Lincoln Boulevard is Santa Monica, and Culver City borders Mar Vista to the east.
Excavation and grading across the Los Angeles area:
Site visit request
Tell us the address, what you're building and any plans you have. We'll call back to set up a site visit.
We'll call to set up a site visit. To talk sooner, call (213) 319-3620
Something went wrong sending your request. Please call (213) 319-3620 and we'll take the details over the phone. Your answers are still filled in below if you'd rather try again.