Home Depot loses store permit battle

The Los Angeles City Council dealt a final blow Wednesday to Home Depot’s high-stakes bid to secure an over-the-counter permit for a new store in Sunland-Tujunga, disregarding a lobbying blitz waged by the company over the last two weeks.

The council voted 12 to 1 to require Home Depot’s project to go through a more extensive environmental review -- a move that doesn’t halt the project but will require months of additional work.

The vote was a victory for Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who said Home Depot triggered the review by performing extensive construction work inside an old Kmart building.

After the vote, Greuel said Home Depot’s aggressive attempt to sway her colleagues -- a campaign that involved at least a dozen lobbyists, two of them former elected officials -- had backfired on the home improvement giant.

“Many of my colleagues said to me that they were offended by the kind of pressure and tactics that were used,” said the councilwoman, whose district includes Sunland-Tujunga. “What we’re saying is: We cannot be bought and sold.”

The vote brought an end, at least for now, to an acrimonious land-use fight in the northeast San Fernando Valley that had touched on race, immigration and the city’s business climate. For more than a year, supporters and opponents have taken to websites, talk radio and the council chamber’s floor as they debated the proposed store, which would occupy a 93,000-square-foot structure on Foothill Boulevard.

The two sides worked furiously to make their case until the very end. Opponents, sensitive over accusations that their cause was anti-Latino, brought with them a religious leader involved in the sanctuary movement for illegal immigrants. Lobbyists for Home Depot went further, arguing that a vote against the hardware chain could hurt the city’s effort to address global warming -- by discouraging businesses from adding fuel-efficient air conditioning systems.

Home Depot representatives said after the vote that they had not decided on their next move. But they defended their efforts at persuading council members, a campaign that involved five lobbying firms and several community organizers.

“We had a story to tell the council people, and we felt that story was important,” company spokesman Damian Jones said. “We hired people that would tell that story, and there is nothing wrong, in our definition, with trying to tell that story.”

Councilman Tony Cardenas, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said the council’s decision made the building permit process murkier and left the city vulnerable to a lawsuit.

Supporters of Home Depot also warned that the vote would cause businesses to face more expenses and more red tape as they attempt to rehabilitate existing buildings.

“This is going to create a lot of havoc down the road for anyone who’s trying to take out a building permit,” said Brendan Huffman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

Home Depot representatives have repeatedly voiced frustration, saying the company secured the over-the-counter permit for the store in July 2006 only to see the process reopened and repeatedly delayed.

Sunland-Tujunga residents challenged the permit and five months ago persuaded a zoning administrator to revoke it. When Home Depot appealed the decision, the North Valley Area Planning Commission voted 3 to 2 to restore the permit.

The council’s vote Wednesday reversed that decision, requiring Home Depot to complete either a mitigated negative declaration, which is a lower-level form of environmental review, or a more extensive environmental impact report.

Home Depot said the latter process would delay its project up to two years. But opponents immediately made it clear that they would press for the most exhaustive process possible.

“We will push for a new traffic study, an air quality study, a noise impact study, and definitely demand that the hours of operation be put in the mitigation package,” said Abby Diamond, an activist with the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance.

From the moment they entered the council chamber Wednesday, Home Depot representatives indicated that they expected to lose their fight. the company did not bring in scores of supporters in orange Home Depot T-shirts, as it had at the last three public meetings on the issue.

Home Depot lobbyist and lawyer Lucinda Starrett called the opposition anti-competitive, saying the nearby Do-It Center home improvement store had its own contingent of lobbyists. She said her client, which spent $2 million on a project that is 90% complete, had been forced to go through a level of review not required of other businesses.

“We spent two years following the rules, the same rules that apply everywhere else,” she said.

Greuel disagreed, saying the store would be open if the company had not tried so hard to avoid the city’s environmental review process. The councilwoman also lashed out at critics who said the vote would hurt the local economy. “To suggest that I would not be business-friendly, that this council would not be business-friendly, is offensive to me,” she said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com