Lavish Getty Arts Center, Museum in Brentwood OKd

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve plans for a $100-million, 450,000-square-foot J. Paul Getty museum and fine arts center, to be built in the Santa Monica Mountains in Brentwood.

The action, after weeks of negotiations between Brentwood homeowners and representatives of the Getty Trust, was described by supporters as a milestone in efforts to preserve the rural character of the mountains and to create a new fine arts showcase for the city. When completed in 1991, the museum and its facilities, secluded on a 105-acre hillside overlooking Brentwood and surrounding areas, are expected to be five times the size of the existing Getty Museum in Malibu.

“This is a wonderful thing,” Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude said after the two-hour hearing at which he urged approval of a conditional-use permit to construct and operate the center. Braude said the project will be a “kingpin” that will prevent further residential or commercial development in the area.

The 3,000-member Brentwood Homeowners Assn. objected to the proposed height and operating hours of the museum. But Hugh J. Snow, spokesman for the group, said he is unsure whether the group will appeal the Planning Commission’s decision to the City Council.

Unless an appeal is filed, New York architect Richard Meier will be free to begin designing the project under guidelines set by the Planning Commission. Designs are expected to be ready for the city’s review in 18 months, and ground breaking for the mammoth project is expected in 1987, according to H. Randall Stoke, an attorney representing the trust.

Homeowners and Getty Trust representatives entered Thursday’s meeting with agreements on 108 of 110 proposed conditions governing the project’s size and operation. But homeowners objected to plans for a 65-foot height on portions of the project and plans that would open the complex for late-night exhibitions and conferences three nights a week drawing up to 600 people a night.

Snow called for a 30-foot limit on the height of the project, disputing the trust’s argument that no portion of a 65-foot museum would be visible from surrounding homes. He also argued that events running beyond 9 p.m. should be restricted to 100 people or fewer.

“This is going to be a massive building . . . 10 acres under one roof,” Snow said. “It’s going to dominate Brentwood. It will be the first thing you see in the morning, the last thing you see at night, and everything in between.”

The facility will be five times as big as the Getty Museum in Malibu.

Plans call for the complex to include a 250,000-square-foot museum, a research center devoted to the history of art and the humanities and a conservation institute in which scholars would study ways of preserving and restoring art treasures. The exhibit halls would house much of the ever-expanding Getty art collection, including paintings, drawings, 18th-Century French furniture and decorative art and photographs that would be relocated from Malibu, a Getty Trust spokesman said.

The Malibu museum would then be devoted exclusively to ancient Greek and Roman artworks, the spokesman said.