Tennis Pro-Actor Stirs a Fierce Zoning Volley

It seemed natural that the house being built in Encino would have a tennis court. Many of the homes nearby had courts of their own. And the new homeowner was hardly a casual player. He was Vijay Amritraj, the top professional tennis player in India before becoming a successful actor.

But, after filing an application for a zoning variance, required for certain features of the court, Amritraj found himself getting a lesson in the peculiar concerns of affluent suburbia.

Five neighbors showed up at the zoning hearing on Friday to register complaints about the proposed tennis court, ranging from a critique of the aesthetics of a high fence to a woman’s assertion that landscaping around the court would spoil the view from the diving board of her swimming pool.

As the hearing began in Van Nuys, things looked bad for Amritraj, who stood silently to the side in tennis shoes and a red windbreaker.

Associate zoning administrator Bill Lillenberg opened the proceeding by reading from an unsympathetic inspector’s report: “The variance request appears to be a convenience rather than a hardship.”

Lights Main Concern

Then the neighbors had their say. Their main concern was that the proposed 20-foot-high light towers would flood their neighborhood in the 5200 block of Andasol Avenue with light.

One neighbor also said that a 10-foot-high chain-link fence--two feet higher than the zoned maximum--would give the property an “institutional appearance.”

Two speakers complained that parts of the lot had been raised so much that they would block normal drainage. “Where is that water going to go--under our swimming pool?” asked one woman.

Then another woman voiced worries about the effect on her pool. “A lot of dirt was added in that area--at least one to two feet. I can see it now from the diving board,” she said.

Amritraj, who was killed off when he played an ally of James Bond in the film “Octopussy,” managed to survive the verbal volleys.

His contractor quickly defused the main objection by announcing that the tennis player was withdrawing his request for lighting. And Lillenberg told the gathering that some of the other complaints fell outside zoning.

The zoning official approved Amritraj’s request, minus the lighting, and recommended that the neighbors call the Department of Buildings and Safety if they had further concerns.

“I was under the impression that, once you get a piece of property, you can put anything on it,” said Amritraj, who has owned a home in Sherman Oaks since 1981.

“I had no clue it was going to take so much effort.”