Planners OK Playa Vista Land Annexation

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission has unanimously approved annexation plans for 800 acres of Playa Vista, a Summa Corp. development that is expected to bring 18,000 new residents, 3 million square feet of office space and 2,400 hotel rooms to a 3 1/2-mile belt of vacant land near Marina del Rey.

Commission members voted 3 to 0 Thursday to approve the annexation, which would enable the city to control growth in the area, and to approve community zoning plans that would set general limits for that growth. If approved by the City Council and the Local Agency Formation Commission, the proposals would remove the property--which lies between Marina del Rey and Los Angeles International Airport--from the control of Los Angeles County.

“The impact of this project will be absorbed by the city of Los Angeles no matter who is making the planning decisions,” commission President Dan Garcia said Thursday, urging colleagues to support the action. “Clearly, it’s in the best interests of the city to annex this property.”

Beside the 800 acres of proposed city territory, the 957-acre Playa Vista project includes 140 acres that would remain in the county as part of new marina development. Planning for remaining acreage is being completed.

Garcia said annexation would create substantial new revenues for the city and enable planners to review individual projects that may affect other areas of Los Angeles. In an interview, he said commission members were impressed by proposed community zoning plans for the property, despite concerns raised by homeowners at a public hearing last month.

“The overall scale of the development--the mixture of housing, commercial and industrial development--is compatible with good planning,” Garcia said, praising elements of the plan that would result in homes being built near commercial centers. Such an arrangement would help to curb the possible traffic problems that new growth often brings, he said.

“I’d love it if a significant number of people lived and worked in that area,” he said. “That’s the kind of development you want to stimulate.”

Commission members spent little time discussing the project, despite concerns raised last month by homeowners at a commission hearing concerning the property. Members of the Westchester Coalition of Concerned Communities, an organization representing 17 homeowner groups, charged that the 15-year Playa Vista project would result in worsening traffic on already-overcrowded streets and lead to high-rise office towers that would block the views of many blufftop homes.

Coalition members had urged commissioners to scale down zoning plans before approving the annexation.

Commission member William Luddy, however, described the opposition as relatively small for a major project and attributed the low level of protest to the quality of the planning work that had gone into the project.

“Sure, there will be traffic impacts,” Garcia said. “A lot of homeowners groups would oppose all development on that basis.”

Garcia countered such criticism by saying that the annexation would bring Playa Vista within the city’s newly adopted transportation plan for the Westchester and Playa Vista areas--a move that would enable the city to collect a one-time fee of $2,010 for every trip that each new project adds to rush-hour traffic.

Proposed development within the 800-acre annexation area is expected to result in about 9,850 additional rush-hour cars by the time the project is finished, city transportation engineer Ray Wellbaum said. In an interview, Wellbaum said the city expects to collect nearly $19.8 million in fees because of the development, for use in improving the area’s road system.

Based on computer models of how those improvements would affect traffic flows, “it looks like the area should be better off with Playa Vista than without it,” he said.

City Council President Pat Russell, who represents the Westchester, Playa Vista and Venice areas, sent a letter to commissioners Tuesday saying she shares the concerns of many homeowners but urging support for the annexation. The letter said Russell expects the transportation plan to help solve potential traffic problems. She recommended that future projects on the site be reviewed individually for other possible problems, including earth movement and glare from mirrored buildings.

After the commission’s action, Garcia predicted that the annexation and zoning plans would easily win approval from the City Council, which is expected to vote on the proposals in mid-November. The annexation is expected to go before the Local Agency Formation Commission, a regulatory body that oversees property annexations and incorporations, late this year or early next year.

“I’d be very surprised if the council changed anything,” Garcia said. “I don’t think the concept will be opposed by anybody on the council.”

City Planner David Gay, who has helped to direct the city’s five-year annexation effort, said new tax revenues from the annexation are expected to bring the city an additional $11 million annually by the year 2000. Additional expenses--for police, fire protection, libraries and other services--are expected to total $8 million a year, resulting in an annual surplus of $3 million, Gay said.

Once plans are complete, the Playa Vista complex--which will be built on one of the largest undeveloped urban tracts in the nation--will be developed over 15 years. It will consist of mixed residential, commercial and office development, and include more than 200 acres of coastal wetlands that will be preserved and managed by the National Audubon Society.