Sepulveda Basin Plan Marks Policy Reversal : After Years of Resistance to Development in Greenbelt Area, City Council OKs Office Project

When he passes the intersection of Victory and Balboa boulevards, Errol Segal gets pretty steamed. There, on the northern edge of the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, a big office complex is going up where Segal hoped in 1984 to put a recycling center.

Like several would-be developers before him, Segal gave up after the area’s Los Angeles City Council member, Joy Picus, told him she would fight rezoning for any commercial project that would clash with the largest green space in the central San Fernando Valley.

“She told me if I wanted to grow corn over there, she’d have no problem,” Segal said.

But the following year, Picus joined in a unanimous council vote to rezone the tract from an agricultural to a commercial zone, allowing Encino developer George E. Moss--a campaign contributor to Picus and other council members--to build more than 200,000 square feet of office space and parking for more than 650 cars on the site across the street from Birmingham High School.

Approval of the project reversed two decades of official resistance to development that could dilute the recreational and rural flavor of the Sepulveda Basin. The city had turned down three rezoning requests by commercial developers. The only request approved was for a commercial recreational use--a tennis club that never got built.

Since the late 1970s, when Picus took office, at least three other would-be developers gave up without seeking a zone change because of her opposition to their plans.

The Reseda-West Van Nuys District Plan--a part of the city’s General Plan--envisioned some future commercial or light industrial use. But earlier commercial plans for the property had met with defeat.

How did the Moss proposal--which had the weight of history and community opinion going against it--gain approval where others had failed?

In a recent interview, Picus said she “was never . . . enthusiastic” about the office park and didn’t give Moss “a lot more encouragement than I’ve given anybody else.”

But Picus said that when Moss, facing hostile neighborhood reaction, scaled down the complex to its present size, she decided it was “the lesser of possible evils”--a reference to other proposals that had come along.

There was “no magic, no mystery” about the favorable decision, Moss said in an interview last week. He said he and his staff “do our research, we do our homework”--and correctly concluded that an “attractive, corporate-type” office development would be approved.

Moss has contributed to the election campaigns of Picus and various other City Council members, as have two zoning consultant/lobbying firms he employed on the project--Engineering Technology Inc. and Pace Engineering.

According to campaign contribution records, Moss has given more than $3,500 to Picus campaigns, including $1,000 in January, 1985, to aid her most recent reelection effort. Engineering Technology and Philip Krakover, a top official with the firm, have contributed $9,500 to Picus, including $3,000 for her 1981 reelection campaign. Krakover and his firm have long been known as being among the top campaign donors to City Council members.

Pace gave Picus $300 in 1981 and has worked for other contributors to her.

Picus said she met with Moss several times about the project, but never met with Krakover. She said, “I don’t make decisions based on campaign contributions.”

Moss said that campaign support “at best might allow someone to have access” to an officeholder, but “certainly does not buy that person’s good favors.”

Both Picus and Moss said one factor in the outcome was Moss’ refusal to quit in the face of opposition. “Whereas others may have given up,” Picus said, Moss would not “take no for an answer.”

Other observers thought Moss must have had more going for him than persistence.

Previous Efforts Failed

An official with the Southern Pacific Transportation Co., which sold the four-acre tract to Moss, said previous attempts to sell or lease the land met with failure when developers could not get their plans approved by the city.

Moss must have had “some awfully good political connections to get anything through,” said R.L. Stacy, regional manager of real estate for Southern Pacific, adding that he didn’t mean there was anything improper about the approval.

Stacy said Moss was given the choice of buying the tract contingent on rezoning, or buying it for less and risking an unfavorable decision. Stacy said Moss chose the risk and the lower price. Moss confirmed this.

Clifford Scherer, an Encino lawyer and spokesman for opponents of the project at Birmingham High, said he was “shocked” that Moss bought the land unconditionally. This suggested an “incredible level of confidence” in the outcome, Scherer said.

The approval also was unusual in that Planning Commission staff had advised strongly against it. Hearing examiner Frank Fielding’s recommendation that rezoning be denied was overturned by the Planning Commission on a 3-1 vote prior to the council’s unanimous approval of the zoning change.

City planning officials said the Planning Commission upholds hearing examiners in rezoning cases about 90% of the time. Fielding, now head of the city’s zoning investigations unit, said that during his 10 years as a hearing examiner, the commission upheld his recommendations in at least 95% of his cases.

Planning Commission member Suzy Neiman of Encino, who cast the only vote against the project because she considered it “lousy land use,” said she “was dumbfounded” when Fielding’s recommendation was overturned.

“It was just so out of the blue to overturn such a strong staff report,” Neiman said.

As a new council member in the late 1970s, Picus successfully opposed a proposal to put Olympic facilities in the Sepulveda Basin, citing “an overwhelming feeling in my district people don’t want to mess with the basin.”

By 1984, when Segal came to her to pitch a recycling center, Picus had already told proponents of a mini-storage complex and of a “kiddie” amusement park to look somewhere else.

Picus--an avid supporter of recycling who at the time was a member of the California Waste Management Board--gave Segal similar advice.

“It was not suitable for that,” she said. “I’m into recycling. . . . It would have to be an undesirable location before I would say no to a recycling center.”

Later that year, Moss acquired the property and sought the zoning change for his office park, which was to include several buildings up to six stories tall with 315,000 square feet of office space.

The proposal came under heavy attack at a public hearing in October, 1984, with opponents--led by staff and parents of students at Birmingham High--complaining that the project would encroach on the greenbelt and worsen traffic congestion. A Picus aide also declared her opposition, and city officials received 10 letters from opponents and petitions signed by 232 members of the surrounding community.

After the hearing, Moss offered to scale down the maximum building heights from six to three stories and the total office space from 315,000 to 210,000 square feet. He also agreed not to allow retail stores in the complex.

Project Called ‘Not Compatible’

Nonetheless, Fielding recommended that the zone change be denied, because the project was not compatible with the adjacent parkland “and would set a precedent for further commercial expansion in this area.”

The project, Fielding said in his report, would worsen “the existing adverse traffic conditions at the intersection of Victory and Balboa boulevards.”

Moreover, Fielding said, it would violate the city policy of encouraging office construction in core commercial areas like Van Nuys and Reseda. Approval “would detrimentally affect the city’s efforts in revitalizing these commercial districts by siphoning away potential office users to the subject site,” he said.

“A more acceptable use,” according to Fielding, “would be a commercial recreational use.”

But the Planning Commission rejected Fielding’s recommendation on June 27, 1985.

Commission president Dan Garcia, who cast one of the three votes in favor of rezoning, said recently he did not recall the case. But a tape of the commission meeting shows that those favoring the request cited Moss’ agreement to scale down the project and the district plan provisions that anticipated eventual commercial use.

In August, 1985, a council committee endorsed the zone change, citing Picus’ decision to support the project. The full council then approved the zone change on Sept. 3, 1985. The council usually goes along with the wishes of a member on issues in his or her district.

Smaller Scale a Factor

Picus said Moss’ agreement to scale down his plan was a factor in her decision. Moreover, she said, neighborhood opposition had died, as evidenced by the fact that only one of the opponents from Birmingham High showed up at the council meeting to testify against the zone change.

But that opponent, Scherer, denied that community critics had changed their minds. He said Birmingham opponents did not turn out because the key decisions were made during summer vacation.

Scherer also said he believed the original proposal was deliberately extravagant so city officials could approve the scaled-down version and say they forced a compromise.

Moss said there was no such ploy. And Picus said that if there was, “George is a better actor that I would expect.” According to Picus, who said she and Moss discussed the project several times, “every foot you took off, you were scraping skin off his back.”

Workmen are now building the first phase of the complex, which Moss said he hopes will be finished by the end of this year. He said he hopes to begin building the second half of the office park next year.