Ayes Become Nays as Neighbors Assail Altered Getty Plan

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 Thursday, 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 in November.

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 last week at the possible effects on the size and shape of the project.

Hugh J. Snow, planning chairman for the 3,000-member Brentwood Homeowners Assn., said its four-member planning committee met a week ago 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, 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 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 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.

Baker, who said he met 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 suggested 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.

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 sought permission for the second parking structure because of additional parking requirements being proposed by city Planning Director Calvin Hamilton.

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 in the future.

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