L.A. Council Acts to Counter Effort to Impose Tight Controls on Growth

Mounting a formal offensive against a sweeping grass-roots initiative campaign to limit commercial growth in Los Angeles, a bitterly divided City Council on Wednesday took its first steps toward creating a less stringent rival plan that its sponsors hope will derail public support for the initiative.

The proposal was approved 8-6 after a biting confrontation among council members over the speed at which the city should grow.

The vote sent the proposal to the Planning Commission to use in drawing up a proposed ordinance along lines set out by the plan’s author, Councilman Howard Finn.

Finn’s plan would cut in half the density allowed in future developments in about 75% of the city’s commercial areas. But it would exempt dense high-rise commercial areas such as downtown as well as other large sections of the city, including redevelopment areas--zones in which developments were approved since 1980--and about 70 areas designated by planners as city “centers.”

The proposed voter initiative, promoted by Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky, would cut in half the building density allowed everywhere but downtown, Hollywood, the Wilshire Corridor and a smattering of other areas.