Zoning Official Rejects Armenian Center

A Los Angeles zoning administrator has dealt a setback to an Armenian cultural organization that wants to build a sprawling community center on 61 acres of woodland in the Hollywood Hills.

Deputy zoning administrator William Lillenberg notified the Armenian General Benevolent Union last week that he had turned down its project because the union missed the deadline for altering an environmental impact report.

Lillenberg said the union could keep the project alive by either appealing his decision to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals by March 21 or resubmitting the project with the proper environmental information.

Either option would prolong a year-old battle between the union and residents of Hollywood Knolls, an affluent residential neighborhood above Barham Boulevard and the Hollywood Freeway, east of Universal City.

Parsegh Kartalian, director of the union’s western district, said Tuesday he was unsure what course the group would take. “A decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said, adding that one probably will be made before next week’s deadline. He declined to discuss the matter further.

Bud Sparks, a Hollywood Knolls homeowner who has spearheaded the hillside residents’ fight against the community center, said he did not expect the union to give up easily. “I think they’ll try again,” he said. “This is just one more chapter in a long book.”

The group first proposed the project in the fall of 1983 and talked of spending between $10 million and $30 million for a cluster of buildings that would be built over a 15-year period.

According to earlier statements that Kartalian and the union’s engineering consultant, Philip Krakover of Engineering Technology Inc., made to zoning officers, the union planned to build a headquarters for the its western district and a 15,000-square-foot community center, 200-seat church, private elementary and secondary school, day-care center and banquet hall. Plans also called for recreational facilities that would include a swimming pool, tennis courts and an athletic field.

To Hollywood Knolls residents, the cluster of buildings represented a constant stream of traffic. “They kept giving us different estimates of how many people would use the facilities,” Sparks said. “It sounded like a traffic nightmare.”

Residents were especially anxious about the fate of Wonder View Drive, an access road that many homeowners use to reach Barham Boulevard. The union’s original plans called for the drive to be closed to the public.

According to Lillenberg, the union revised its plans at a public hearing last July, acceding to residents’ demands that the road be kept open. But because its original environmental impact report only dealt with a closed road, Lillenberg told the union to prepare additional information that would show the effects of keeping Wonder View Drive open.

“By keeping the street open, all the other street patterns would change,” Lillenberg said. “I saw there was the possibility of changes in gradings and the locations of some of the buildings. None of that was addressed in their report.”

Under city law, the union had a year from March 6, 1984--when it originally submitted its proposal to the city--to refile the environmental report. Lillenberg said he notified the union last September and then in January that the deadline was approaching. “I never heard anything from them,” he said.

Last summer, members of the Hollywood Coordinating Committee tried to persuade the union to move the center site from Hollywood Knolls to the eastern edge of Hollywood, where many of the area’s Armenian residents live.

But, according to Sparks and committee members, the negotiations went nowhere.

Although the union can appeal Lillenberg’s ruling to the city’s Zoning Appeals Board, Sparks suggested that the organization might have a difficult time. “My decision had nothing to do with the merits of the project,” he said. “They simply didn’t provide enough information in the time they had. That doesn’t give the (appeals) board much to work with.”

The union’s other option would be to resubmit the project, a route that might prove costly--Sparks estimates it might cost the union as much as $10,000 to refile--but one expected to have a better chance of success.