Mood Is Gloomy in the Shadow of New Apartments

Standing in her backyard, Ranla Hovis recalled the decade of glorious privacy she has enjoyed in her sprawling, one-story house in North Hollywood. She proudly surveyed a small green paradise she has cultivated between her house and a brick wall at the end of her property, just beyond her swimming pool.

Then Hovis looked up--at the enemy.

Over her wall looms the wooden skeleton of a five-story apartment building. She said she imagines its inhabitants looking into her yard. She said she already feels their eyes on her when she swims in her pool. “It’s Big Brother!” she exclaimed.

Talk to people on many streets in North Hollywood these days and you hear similar tales of the zoning-battle zone. Telling them are other people who, like Hovis, live in the shadows of hulking apartment projects or fear they soon may.

Owners Fight Construction

Homeowners groups have been fighting to head off construction of more such structures in residential areas. But were dealt a blow Monday when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge lifted an order that the groups obtained in April to block construction of 56 apartment projects.

Of those, 38 are in the San Fernando Valley. And North Hollywood has 23 of those.

“They are definitely destroying the quality of North Hollywood,” Tom Paterson, president of the North Hollywood Residents Assn., said of the increasing number of apartment buildings. “There are too many of them, and they’re out of scale with the neighborhoods they’re in.”

Paterson said that ground has been broken in North Hollywood for about 10 apartment complexes with 50 or more units in the past year. Several have more than 100 units and run up to five stories, he said.

Threat to Ambiance

Paterson foresees an end to the quaint atmosphere of some neighborhoods, along with parking problems and a rapid rise in rents as older homes and smaller apartment buildings are torn down to make way for big projects. “They’re going to pave us over,” another North Hollywood homeowner said. “These apartment buildings are going to turn us into Tarzana.”

The 56 projects affected by Monday’s ruling were put on hold recently by a temporary restraining order won by the Federation of Canyon and Hillside Assns., an umbrella organization of 43 homeowners groups. Behind the case is the groups’ fight to get the city of Los Angeles to bring its zoning for about 200,000 parcels in line with the city’s General Plan.

The General Plan, a patchwork of development goals set by Los Angeles-area communities over the past 20 years, was intended to have the force of law in determining zoning set by the Los Angeles. The plan discourages major development in some areas by limiting the density of housing. But the city nevertheless has approved zoning for many lots that allows more development.

Moratorium Issued

Pending review of the situation, the Los Angeles City Council issued a moratorium on development of the 200,000 parcels. But, under a three-year interim ordinance adopted in April, projects that had been submitted for review by the city before April 4 were exempted from the moratorium.

The homeowner groups sued to block that exemption, and Judge John L. Cole last month issued a temporary order, halting 90 construction projects. That list was later cut to 56, and on Monday the order was lifted entirely.

Paterson said that the construction hovering over Hovis’ swimming pool is not one of the 23 projects tied up in the court case. Rather, it is one of about 10 projects in North Hollywood granted building permits in the several weeks before the city imposed its moratorium, he said.

“I guess it’s progress,” said Eva Wiere, who lives in a duplex next to another of the apartment developments under construction, this one on Riverside Drive near Farmdale Avenue. “What can I do about it? Can I stop it? I can’t move. The rent here is $270 a month.”

A Changing Face

“The density of this area is definitely going to be increased,” said Barbara Coppos, the owner of a triplex next to where a 108-unit apartment complex is going up at the northwest corner of Chandler Boulevard and Colfax Avenue. “There will be parking problems. The whole face of the neighborhood will definitely change.”

Coppos said the owner of the project has tried to buy her house for further development on the block. She refused to sell, she said, because, “he didn’t offer enough for me to be interested.

“You talk to a lot of people in the entertainment industry and they’ll tell you they started in North Hollywood,” she said. “That was because they could afford to. They could afford the housing. I wonder, are those kinds of people, the people who are starting out, are they going to be able to afford what’s going up now?”

But Chick Montgomery, a city planner, noted that city officials have to balance the homeowners’ complaints with landowners’ rights.

Due Process Issues

“The people who testify from the communities will be talking about the impacts on life styles,” Montgomery said. “But the decision-makers will tend to concentrate on issues of due process for property owners.”

Next door to Hovis, a couple is planning to sell their house, a move the husband said is in response to the apartment complex. The pair, who asked that their names not be used, said they bought their house three years ago and are having a difficult time selling it.

“We have open houses,” said the husband, a screenwriter-producer. “One time recently we had no fewer than 55 agents bring people by. We had a lot of action. But, the minute they get out back, they’re not interested anymore.”

The homeowners who appeal for the preservation of North Hollywood’s character speak of it with the same fervor that John Muir lavished on the giant redwood. “When this is over, it will be all concrete and no charm,” Coppos said. Said Paterson, “It has a unique quality all its own.”

North Hollywood’s Character

The North Hollywood character, they say, springs from its colorful people--many longtime residents work at nearby Universal Studios or the recording studios in the area--and the variety of its buildings.

Al Landini, a city planner based in Van Nuys, said the community’s mixture of duplexes, triplexes, single-family homes and apartments gives it perhaps the most diversified housing of any area of the Valley. The tearing down of smaller multiple-family dwellings and single-family homes in favor of apartment projects could make parts of North Hollywood look more uniform, he said.

To Arthur Warmoll, 80, a retired movie auditor, part of North Hollywood’s character can be found in the mimosa in his front lawn. The seedling that became the tree was a gift from the Savannah, Ga., Chamber of Commerce when he was in the state for the filming of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the early 1960s.