Treeland Site : Project Near Hidden Hills Stirs Protests

A proposal to build a 22-building office and condominium complex and a 200-room hotel near the gate-guarded entrance to Hidden Hills has prompted protests from residents of several expensive nearby neighborhoods.

Hidden Hills homeowners have joined neighbors from Woodland Hills next door to try to block the development, proposed for the 30-acre Treeland Nursery site by pioneer West San Fernando Valley nurseryman John Boething.

Boething, meantime, has promised residents that he and his family will take “all the time we need to build a quality project” for the tree-studded land. The tract is situated at 23475 Long Valley Road, northwest of the Valley Circle Boulevard-Ventura Freeway interchange.

‘Obsession Is Quality’

“Our whole obsession is quality,” said Boething, 65, who has run a nursery at the site for 33 years. “We’re going to have something different, or we’re not go to have anything at all.”

Preliminary plans filed for environmental review by Los Angeles city planners call for construction of nearly 1.1 million square feet of office space, plus 45,000 square feet of retail space, 71 residential town houses and the three-story, 200-room hotel. Parking for 3,630 cars is also proposed. The project as planned would break ground in 1988 or 1989 and be completed about 10 years later.

The development would require the bulldozing of nearly 823,000 cubic yards of earth from a hill that now separates the nursery from a Woodland Hills neighborhood, according to an initial city report. The report also states that the project would probably contribute to neighborhood air pollution, traffic congestion and noise.

That’s reason enough for the city to deny the zoning change that Boething will need to obtain a development permit, homeowners charged in a flurry of written complaints received by city officials Monday.

Large Number of Letters

Jimmy Liao, a Los Angeles city planner handling the environmental assessment of the project, said the 44 letters of protest his office has received represent an unusually large number for a project in its early stages of city review. He said public hearings on the application have not yet been scheduled.

“There is no doubt that tampering with the natural hill between the freeway and Canzonet Street will destroy the natural noise barrier for all our homes,” said Andrew Harris, one of 15 Lund Street residents who signed a petition opposing the project.

“The Treeland project will tremendously complicate and magnify an already miserable freeway and local street traffic situation,” said Ladrillo Street resident Irving Hirshfeld.

“This type of project only belongs in a more suitable environment, such as Warner Center, not in a residential neighborhood,” Bruce Shapiro of Deseret Drive said.

Hidden Hills City Councilwoman Kathy Bartizal warned Los Angeles officials that the project would be “extremely detrimental to the residential character of the surrounding areas.”

But Hidden Hills Mayor Alana Knaster advised Los Angeles planners that her panel has reviewed the project and, “in general, we find the overall garden complex design appropriate. . . .” She said officials of her small bedroom city are “negotiating some changes informally” with Boething, including the relocation of the proposed hotel away from Hidden Hills’ gate house--and closer to Woodland Hills.

Market is ‘Miserable’

According to Boething, his most recent plans call for the hotel to be built in the center of his property so that all neighbors will be buffered. He acknowledged Tuesday that the Calabasas-area commercial real-estate market is “miserable” now and that traffic often moves slowly.

But work on his project would not begin for about three or four years, when the market will have stabilized and state highway engineers will have begun a new Valley Circle freeway interchange and started widening Ventura Freeway, he said.

Boething said only about a fourth of the “unstable” hill at the edge of his property will be graded away. “The hill won’t come down lower than the houses that are there. They will still have screening of the freeway noise,” he pledged.

Boething, who discussed his plans Monday night with about 75 Hidden Hills and Woodland Hills residents, said homeowners will relax when they learn that he is proposing a high-quality, high-rent project.