Choosing Up Sides on Slow-Growth Initiative

Louise Frankel, a 25-year resident of Tarzana, recalls when residents took leisurely Saturday drives down the community’s main drag, Ventura Boulevard.

That was years ago, before development along the south San Fernando Valley thoroughfare helped create traffic congestion that spans the weekends. Today, Frankel said, residents avoid the boulevard and have resorted to weaving through side streets, alleys and parking lots to get in and out of their neighborhoods.

“Everywhere you go you see the impact of more people and automobiles,” she said. She likes Proposition U, the slow-growth initiative on the November ballot. “We would be winners,” she said.

If approved, the initiative would extend temporary building restrictions along the boulevard that residents won last year after protesting traffic conditions and overdevelopment. Frankel, who has been active in her area’s homeowner association, said residents are especially concerned about a so-called “super block” near Reseda and Ventura boulevards that is designated for intense development.

The initiative’s limits, she said, could make the difference between “having a workable community out here with small variety shopping and entertainment, and having big office buildings.”

“The initiative . . . certainly can’t cure the problem,” she said. “(But) we have to address this traffic in every way that we possibly can.”

Martin Seaton thinks Proposition U is “asinine.”

The president of Cadillac Fairview of California, a major development company, is irate that his firm’s planned $300-million, 3-million-square-foot high-rise industrial park near the intersection of the San Diego, Harbor and Artesia freeways could be caught up in the building limits proposed in the initiative.

Some new buildings are already up and large spaces for additional development sit nearby. Company officials estimate that if the initiative’s limits are fully applied to the project, it will “substantially reduce” the two-thirds of the project not yet built. The loss could be up to $50 million worth of construction, one official said.

Set in an industrial area, the project is the type that should be allowed to develop intensively, Seaton said. “There’s not been a tittle of complaint. . . . This is at the intersection of three freeways, where you want to have major development.

“I believe that proper planning requires down-zoning in certain instances. But it should be on a piecemeal basis (that determines) this is good for development and this is overdeveloped.”

If the project is cut back, Seaton doubts that the aerospace and high-tech firms it has been attracting will remain in the city but will, as proponents of the initiative have suggested, shift to other areas reserved for intense development. “My view is they probably would not go downtown. They’d just go farther out into the suburbs.”

Should the initiative pass, proponents say, Seaton and others who feel they have been mistreated may seek individual zoning changes to restore lost development rights.

That does not sit well with Seaton. “I think it’s asinine to take a development site that is already (at) a freeway (interchange), down-zone it, then come back and up-zone it. I don’t doubt we’d get it, but it would be at substantial cost.”

Cadillac Fairview’s project is among those that the City Council is hurriedly attempting to exempt from the initiative’s limits.

George Young does not like what he sees happening to the commercial strip along Sepulveda Boulevard near Culver City.

The old pattern of mixed, low-rise commercial buildings that abut Young’s single-family residential neighborhood changed recently when a large apartment building went up. One five-story structure is rising next to the homes, another is proposed across the street and and more appear to be under consideration for nearby properties, Young said.

“There’s too much traffic,” said Young, who cites city traffic reports that show Sepulveda is already overburdened. Young strongly supports the commercial building limits in Proposition U.

While the initiative is primarily aimed at office and commercial development, its building limits would also apply to some large residential buildings built in commercial zones--such as those that Young and his neighbors have protested.

If Proposition U were already in effect, Young said, “we would have seen lower densities and the maintenance of the character of the area.”

At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Los Angeles, the initiative’s limits would affect a proposed $20-million, 100,000-square-foot medical research center. Even if the initiative is defeated, the project could still be affected by building limits contained in an ordinance approved by the City Council as an alternative to the initiative.

“We are a teaching hospital, actively engaged in research,” said Irving Feintech, a member of the hospital’s board of directors. He said the new research building is needed to relieve crowding in existing facilities and to expand areas needed for medical laser technology and other research. “We are bursting at the seams,” he said.

Feintech acknowledged that he has heard concerns expressed by some nearby homeowner groups about the size of the project.

But he noted that before the initiative came along, the hospital could have built the new building without obtaining any approval from the City Council.

Now “it looks like we have to go for a special permit and that could delay it for an additional two years,” he said. “We need it now.”

There are few current restrictions in effect now on commercial development in most areas of the City of Los Angeles. Proposition U, the slow-growth initiative on the November ballot, would institute such restrictions. The shaded areas in the map at left shows areas where the Proposition U restriction would not apply and high-density construction could still take place. city. Shaded areas in map at right show how a slow-growth ordinance now before the City Council, designed to head off the initiative’s full impact, would permit considerably more areas for intense commercial development. There are few current restrictions in effect now on commercial development in most areas of the City of Los Angeles. Proposition U, the slow-growth initiative on the November ballot, would institute such restrictions. The shaded areas in the map at left shows areas where the Proposition U restriction would not apply and high-density construction could still take place. city. Shaded areas in map at right show how a slow-growth ordinance now before the City Council, designed to head off the initiative’s full impact, would permit considerably more areas for intense commercial development.