Council Overrides Warner Center Hotel Veto

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday voted 13 to 1 to override Mayor Tom Bradley’s veto of a permit for construction of a 14-story, 340-room hotel in Warner Center.

The overwhelming defeat dealt Bradley by the council, which has rarely gone against the mayor’s wishes, came after weeks of intense lobbying by the hotel’s developer, Norman Kravetz, and by Robert Voit, a rival developer in the fast-growing Woodland Hills commercial center. Voit sought to stop the project.

“This is a classic case of one developer not wanting competition from another developer,” Councilman Joel Wachs said in supporting the hotel’s construction. Voit owns property where Marriott Corp. is building a 17-story, 470-room hotel, about a mile from the proposed Hilton Hotel site.

Courtesy to Picus

Several council members, including a number of usual Bradley allies, said they voted to override the mayor’s veto as a courtesy to Councilwoman Joy Picus, who supported the hotel’s construction in her district.

Bradley was out of town Friday and unavailable for comment.

However, Deputy Mayor Tom Houston said, “We expected to be overridden. There’s a tradition on the council that, if a member representing a district where a development is planned really wants that development, they will defer to their judgment.”

Bradley’s office confirmed that it is rare for the council to override the mayor’s veto but could not provide any specific figures.

Twelve votes were needed for an override. Council President Pat Russell, who had previously opposed the project, provided the only vote against overriding the veto.

Although the council normally has 15 members, it is down to 14 because of the resignation of Councilman Arthur Snyder. The original vote to permit the hotel was 12 to 1, with Wachs absent.

Bradley earlier in the week denied an allegation by Picus that he was opposing the project because of his friendship with Voit, one of his biggest campaign contributors in the San Fernando Valley. According to a May analysis by The Times of contributions, Warner Center Properties, of which Voit is a managing partner, was Bradley’s biggest campaign contributor from the Valley in 1983 and 1984, providing $12,100.

In his veto message, Bradley said he was concerned about traffic congestion around Warner Center and about the use for a commercial project of what is designated as industrial land.

During Friday’s council discussion, Picus responded that the hotel, where guests would arrive and depart at all times of day, would generate less traffic during rush hour than an already permitted high-rise office building. She said the hotel’s developer could, without city approval, construct a high-rise office building without taking any steps to reduce traffic.

Efforts to Ease Traffic

As a condition for the hotel’s approval, the developer will be required to take such traffic-easing measures as hiring a coordinator for employee ride-sharing, offering shuttle buses to airport and other locations and paying for transportation improvements such as street widening. Although local residents have criticized the proposed traffic measures as meaningless, Picus told her colleagues: “I’ve done my best to look at what is best for my community.”

After the vote, Picus attributed her victory to her unrelenting personal lobbying of each of her colleagues. Bradley did not do that, Houston said, because Picus had already obtained commitments from most of her colleagues to support the project.

Norman Emerson, an aide to Voit, said after the vote: “I’m disappointed.” He said it was not as much a personal defeat for Voit as it was a “rejection of 20 years of planning.”

He pointed out that the city Planning Commission also opposed the hotel’s construction because it conflicted with the master plan for Warner Center, which calls for the most intense commercial development to occur west of Canoga Avenue. The plan designated the proposed Hilton Hotel site, east of Canoga and just south of Victory Boulevard, for less intense industrial use.

The hotel is expected to open in late 1987.