Proposed home adjacent to historic Ard Eevin residence secures council approval
A 7,500-square-foot home planned for a hillside lot near the Ard Eevin-Highlands Historic District will move forward despite claims from nearby residents that the house would detract from the area’s cultural significance and aesthetic cohesion.
Glendale City Council voted 3-1 late Tuesday night to approve the home, siding with the Design Review Board’s initial decision and rejecting a subsequent appeal filed by Judy Rao, resident of the 1903-built Ard Eevin residence located near the planned house.
Rao and her supporters said they reviewed local guidelines, laws and historical perspectives to support their conclusion that the proposed home is inappropriate due to size, mass, scale, design and location on the lot.
“Many cubic yards of earth and major hillside excavation will transform a narrow canyon to accommodate this massive structure,” Rao said during the hearing that stretched more than three hours. “It will be in contrast to everything surrounding it.”
The two-story, single-family home proposed by owner Zareh Issakhanian would span 7,562 square feet of residential space, in addition to two attached two-car garages and a pool, at 1732 Ard Eevin Ave. It would be built on a vacant, undeveloped, 372,219-square-foot lot.
Speaking on behalf of Issakhanian, local development consultant Rodney Kahn said that ratio was the key — at over 8½ acres, the space could accommodate four single-family houses.
“We are proposing one,” he said.
The argument appeared to sway several council members, with Glendale Mayor Zareh Sinanyan concluding that, in a vacuum, the property “would be totally out of place. But we have a different situation.”
The proposed house, as big as it is, looks tiny on the lot, he added
Councilwoman Paula Devine cast the lone dissenting vote, agreeing with the appellants that the proposed project was out of sync with its residential context and violated local aesthetic and size guidelines adopted by Glendale officials in 2011.
Trees currently obscuring the view of the home “should not be used to circumvent the code by hiding a structure that … is not compatible with the surrounding neighborhood,” she said.
Councilman Vrej Agajanian recused himself from the hearing because he may have a financial conflict of interest involving Issakhanian.
Attorneys for Rao and Issakhanian also disagreed about the validity of a mitigated negative declaration, or MND, used by staff and adopted by the city’s Planning Commission in 2010 for a previous project proposed by the same property owner on the same lot.
For that since-abandoned project, Issakhanian sought to divide the lot in two and build two, single-family homes with a combined higher square footage than the current project, located higher up on the hillside on the same lot.
According to a staff report, the previous project would have had a more significant environmental impact than the current one approved in April of last year. With no significant changes to the area since the MND was undertaken, staff said only an addendum to the original report was needed.
The hearing on Tuesday echoed themes of the recent unsuccessful appeal of a 5,400-square-foot, single-family modern residence at 1650 Cumberland Terrace in north Glendale that again pitted a design traditionalist against a contemporary-minded homeowner.
The appeals, taken together, are part of a broader debate over the aesthetic future of Glendale.
The appellant in the Cumberland Terrace case, Lee Straus, said during the hearing in late August that the design guidelines at the root of much of the debate “were a way of preventing mansionization in Glendale.”
Referencing the heated environment surrounding home building in the area in general, Varand Gourjian, an attorney for Issakhanian, said Tuesday that he didn’t think Glendale founding father Leslie Brand could get his projects approved today.
“His new neighbors would tell him that if he wanted to be so unique or different with his design, or if he wanted to build such a large home on his large lot, then he should probably move to La Cañada.”
Twitter: @lila_seidman
