Neighbors Oppose Expansion : Getty Asks Change in Museum Plans

The Getty Trust, whose plans for a $100-million museum and fine arts center drew enthusiastic support at their unveiling in November, now has drawn fire from Brentwood homeowners by asking for plan changes that could add more floors and a second parking structure to the proposed project in the Santa Monica Mountains.

In requests to the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, which is scheduled to act on a conditional-use application Jan. 24, Getty Trust attorneys have asked the city to lift a two-story height limit recommended by hearing examiner Jon Perica, who reviewed the project at a hearing Nov. 19.

If supported by the commission and approved by the City Council, the request would free New York architect Richard Meier to design a multiple-story complex up to a height of 65 feet as long as 80% of the project is kept to 45 feet or less, according to Getty Trust attorney Donald Baker.

Additional changes requested Dec. 28 in a 22-page letter would clarify several other proposed building conditions to enable the trust to construct more than one museum building and to create a second parking structure near Chalon Road and the San Diego Freeway, where a single 200-car structure had been planned, Baker said.

Homeowners, who asked for a delay of a scheduled Jan. 3 commission hearing to study the requests, expressed alarm this week at the possible effects on the size and shape of the project.

“They could put up a six-story apartment building,” said John Scantlin, a homeowner whose property borders the 105-acre project site. “They could put that right next to my fence. They are asking for a blank check to do anything the architect feels like doing.”

Hugh J. Snow, planning chairman for the 3,000-member Brentwood Homeowners Assn., said its four-member planning committee met Saturday to weigh the requested changes and found them a “radical departure” from the trust’s earlier proposals, in which the museum was characterized as a two-story structure that would blend into the topography of the mountains. Snow said homeowners, who praised the cooperation of Getty Trust officials in November, now will oppose the project unless it is restored to its original scale.

“We supported it with a particular kind of structure in mind,” he said. “It appears to us they (trust officials) are trying to change course in midstream, and we are quite concerned about it.”

Snow said homeowners object to both the 65-foot limit and plans for the second parking structure, which he said could lead to large, unsightly buildings. Previously, he said, Getty Trust representatives planned to place most of the parking underground and to create a low-rise, hilltop museum that would be invisible from the homes around it.

Although proposed restrictions still require that “no material portion” of the museum be visible from a set of selected points in the community, the presence of a 65-foot building and a second outdoor parking structure is bound to be visible to homeowners at other locations, Snow said. Homeowners like Scantlin, for example, whose property shares a long border with the project site, certainly could see a project that tall, he said.

In addition, Snow said, homeowners are unsure what it means to see “no material portion” of a 65-foot building. The definition of a material portion, he said, “could be anything less than half.”

Baker, who said he met last week with Snow and other homeowners on behalf of the trust, defended the requested changes by pointing out that the 65- and 45-foot height limits had been recommended by the same hearing examiner who recommended the two-story limit.

The two kinds of limits, which homeowners branded as contradictory, were proposed on the premise that museum floors may be significantly higher than traditional office floors, Baker said. In the trust’s original plans outlining a two-story project, planners tried to allow for the possibility that high-vaulted ceilings could raise the height of the museum to between 45 and 65 feet, he said.

Removing the two-story limit, Baker said, would not change the ultimate height of the project; it would simply give the architect more freedom to design an effective building within the same height limits. The architect could, for example, place two stories of museum space adjacent to three stories of research space that would be no greater in height.

‘Wanted Flexibility’

While homeowners argued that the two-story limit is a more effective height control than a 65-foot limit, Baker said the intent of the change is to accommodate the multiple uses proposed for the complex. The museum, he pointed out, is designed to combine an art museum with a research center devoted to art and the humanities and with a conservation institute where scholars would study ways of preserving and restoring art treasures.

“The architect . . . wanted some flexibility,” Baker said. “It should make no difference whether (the project) is two stories or three stories, if it’s all the same height. It wasn’t that we came in and said we wanted something different.”

Baker said the trust has asked for permission to build a second parking structure near Chalon Road and the freeway because of additional parking requirements being proposed by city Planning Director Calvin Hamilton. Original plans called for up to 900 spaces of underground parking to be placed beneath the museum, with a 200-space garage located near the freeway.

But the city has asked for provisions for up to 400 additional spaces in years to come, Baker said. The only hope of providing that, he said, is to plan for an additional parking structure at some point in the future.

Homeowners are fearful that permission for a second parking structure will enable the trust to place nearly all of the parking in outdoor structures, rather than under the museum as originally planned, Snow said.

Baker conceded that there might be less underground parking than the 900 spaces discussed at the city examiner’s hearing. But he said it was doubtful that all the parking could be placed in outdoor structures because there are proposed limits to their sizes. The original structure was proposed for 200 cars, he said, and the second structure would have no more than two stories above ground. The top would be landscaped so that parked cars are not visible from above, he said.

Cindy Miscikowski, an aide to Councilman Marvin Braude, said the disagreement over parking may represent a misunderstanding between homeowners and the Getty Trust. She said the councilman is not necessarily opposed to a multiple-story museum if it remains a low-scale, split-level type of structure.

However, the councilman would object to a tall structure that would rise four, five or six stories over the hillsides, she said.

Snow said he hopes representatives of the two sides can meet again before the Planning Commission meeting in hopes of settling the differences.