Further consideration of West L.A. project postponed to October

When even fellow developers and local politicians looking to generate jobs call your proposed project way too big, it’s probably time to go back to the drawing board.

That appears to be the case with the plan for Bundy Village & Medical Park, which earlier this year prompted street protests, petition drives and hundreds of “Fight Bundy Village” lawn signs from Westchester to Pacific Palisades.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission in March approved the proposed 1.3-million-square-foot complex of medical offices, retail stores and housing despite residents’ and business concerns about increased traffic in the busy Olympic Boulevard corridor. Los Angeles City Council’s planning and land use management committee was to take up the matter later this month, with a full council vote anticipated soon after.

But push-back from neighborhood groups and Councilmen Bill Rosendahl and Paul Koretz spurred the developer, Westside Medical Park, to ask that further consideration be postponed. The committee is scheduled to take up the matter on Oct. 5, with a council vote planned for Oct. 20.

Those dates, too, might be premature, said Dale Goldsmith, an attorney for Westside Medical Park, of which Stonebridge Holdings Inc. is the managing partner. “Westside Medical Park will not bring the project before the City Council until we believe that we have adequately addressed all legitimate concerns,” he said.

That has given opponents some breathing room, but cynicism reigns.

“The community has yet to hear anything from Mr. Lombardi,” Lauren Cole, chairwoman of the Brentwood Community Council’s transportation committee, said of Stonebridge’s founder and president, Michael Lombardi. That suggests, she added, that “he really doesn’t want community input.”

As originally envisioned, the 11.5-acre development on Olympic Boulevard between Bundy Drive and Centinela Avenue would result in 21,000 additional daily car trips in the area, according to traffic engineers. Those would be on top of thousands of car trips generated by the bevy of media and entertainment companies that already populate the district, residents point out. They also say the project lacks public amenities and open space.

Leading the opposition is Kilroy Realty Corp., which owns the Westside Media Center across from the proposed complex. Concerned that further congestion would discourage prospective tenants, the company has organized phone drives and handed out lawn signs to whip up resistance.

Tribeca West, a complex housing post-production and entertainment companies next to the proposed compound, has formally expressed its opposition to the Planning Commission on similar grounds and complained about additional traffic during construction.

Although the proposed project is outside Koretz’s district, he has criticized the traffic study as inadequate, saying it did not include many intersections that would be affected in his district. In a letter to the city, he called for an expanded analysis.

Rosendahl, whose district includes the site, said in February that he supported the development “in concept.” Now he says Lombardi is “going to have to sit with my community and my staff and get their blessing. Otherwise, I will publicly get out there and go after it.” He said he has made it clear to Lombardi that the project would have to generate “dramatically less traffic” to win his support.

Xochitl Gonzalez of the West Sawtelle Homeowners Assn. said she questions Lombardi’s premise that West L.A.’s need for medical facilities should override traffic concerns. “We have UCLA, Cedars, Santa Monica Hospital, St. John’s,” she said. “There are clearly underserved communities in Los Angeles County. We are not one of them.”

martha.groves@latimes.com