Plan to Curtail High-Density Growth Gets New Life

Los Angeles planning officials last week announced an accelerated schedule for completion of the most far-reaching development limitation plan in the city’s history, a plan that has had low priority in City Hall for 12 years.

The sudden rush for action on the ordinance led to speculation in City Hall that it is being sought as an alternative to the high-rise limitation initiative recently proposed by Los Angeles Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky. Backers of the initiative expect to collect enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot.

Dan O’Donnell, associate city planner, denied that the ordinance is connected to the initiative but conceded that the Planning Department hopes to use the public attention created by the initiative to give the old proposal new life.

‘Receptive Climate’ Cited

“It’s because of what we perceive to be a receptive climate right now that it’s come out in such a hurry,” he said.

Officials of the Planning Department’s land use administrative division said they hope to have the ordinance ready for adoption by the end of September.

Planning officials also released a map that for the first time shows specific areas where high-density development would be concentrated under the ordinance.

The plan, called the Neighborhood Protection Ordinance, would establish 42 centers for high-intensity development throughout the city, including 16 in the San Fernando Valley, while providing a blanket limitation on development outside the centers.

Planning officials said the first step in the accelerated schedule will be the appointment this week of a 15- to 25-member citizens committee to hold hearings on the plan.

Two members of the Los Angeles Planning Commission are scheduled to meet with city planners today to pick candidates for that committee from a 99-page list of organizations.

Letters will be sent to those chosen before the end of this week, O’Donnell said. The schedule calls for the committee to begin discussing growth strategies for the city by May 18.

O’Donnell said the committee will be made up of representatives from diverse interest groups, including homeowners, tenant organizations, bankers, developers, real estate interests, landowners, environmentalists and architects.

Comment on Policy Questions

O’Donnell said the citizens’ committee will be asked to comment on broad policy questions, such as whether the centers are in the right places, and how they should be connected by transportation links.

The job of reviewing the proposed centers’ boundaries on a street-by-street basis will be too complex to complete by September, O’Donnell said.

Therefore, he said, the hope of the Planning Department is to gain the Planning Commission’s and City Council’s approval of the concept of the centers. After that, the department would begin specific planning for each of the 42 centers to pinpoint boundaries and establish allowable levels of development, O’Donnell said.

Deputies for both Braude and Yaroslavsky said they believe that the Neighborhood Protection Ordinance is being pushed by opponents of the initiative on the City Council, possibly in the hope of either watering down the initiative or providing evidence that it is no longer needed.

“Their aim is to adopt it before the initiative is voted on,” said Blair Barnes, Yaroslavsky’s deputy.

In spite of those suspicions, backers of the initiative said they support the Neighborhood Protection Ordinance, at least in its present form, because it would accomplish much of what they want anyway.

“I was surprised with the level of quality and the comprehensive effort,” Braude’s chief deputy, Cindy Miscikowsky, said of the ordinance.

‘Scared of the Initiative’

“These people who have all of a sudden seen the light of day are clearly scared of the initiative,” Miscikowsky said. “For that reason, the initiative has been good if it has blown the dust off this plan.”

Initiative backers said they believe that the initiative and the proposed ordinance can complement one another even though, at the moment, they do not know exactly how the two similar proposals would be reconciled.

The Braude-Yaroslavsky initiative, a response to concern over large commercial developments near residential areas, would cut in half the allowable size of buildings in “Height District 1,” the planning term for mid-rise commercial areas that cover 75% of the city.

It does not affect major high-rise centers such as downtown, Universal City and the Wilshire District but would severely curtail building activity in other areas, such as Warner Center. There, building size would be restricted to 1.5 square feet to each square foot of land, the same ratio as in residential areas.

Different Approach

The Neighborhood Protection Ordinance takes a different approach to the same goal.

Planner O’Donnell said its 42 centers provide dispersion of heavy development throughout the city, rather than in just a few areas, and allow greater flexibility in determining how intense development can be within each center.

As conceived now, development within some of the centers could go as high as six square feet of floor space for each square foot of lot.

But in the Valley’s 16 centers, the maximum building-to-lot ratio would be only 3-to-1. That would be a severe reduction in areas such as Van Nuys, which now allows buildings at ratios of 14-to-1, but would not affect Warner Center, O’Donnell said.

Outside the centers, the maximum ratio would be 1.5-to-1, the same as in the Braude-Yaroslavsky initiative.

Remain Skeptical

Backers of the initiative said they do not know what effect the ordinance and initiative would have on each other if both are approved.

They remained skeptical, however, that the Planning Department will be able to meet its rigorous schedule, or that it should.

“That’s everything we’ve been doing for the last 10 years,” Miscikowsky said. “This is going to be the city’s future. Why should we do it in three months?”