City Panel Switches Signals on a Health Club at Park Stables

The Los Angeles Recreation and Park Commission Friday reversed its endorsement of a proposal to put a health club at the financially troubled Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Griffith Park.

“I’m just shocked this could happen,” said J. Albert Garcia, the center’s president, who stormed out of the meeting after the commission demonstrated it no longer looked favorably on his project. “We’ve already gone through all of this already.”

Because only four of the five commissioners were present, the board deferred a final decision until its Feb. 13 meeting.

Concept OKd in ’85

The commission in December, 1985, had voted 4 to 0 to approve the concept of the health club and a new access road from the Ventura Freeway to the equestrian center.

The commission at that time agreed that the club was “an appropriate recreational use for parkland” and Garcia was instructed to submit a final supplemental environmental impact report and final estimates of the cost.

Friday, Garcia said center executives had spent $80,000 last year preparing the report, and that investors had spent $100,000 a month keeping the center afloat pending its completion. The center is at least $17 million in debt.

Staff members of the park commission had recommended approval of the final report.

Garcia said the health club, which would include showers and other facilities for riders, must be built for him to turn his center around and make it competitive with other equestrian centers on the West Coast horse-show circuit.

The club would include racquetball courts, volleyball facilities, a jogging track, whirlpool baths and steam rooms, and would cost $8 million to $12 million, he said.

As a condition of the health club’s gaining approval, Garcia had agreed not to build a 300-room hotel at the equestrian center, which is on land owned by Los Angeles. Garcia rents the land from the city at a minimal cost.

Chapter 11 Protection

Because of its financial problems, the center entered into a legal battle with its chief lender, Gibraltar Savings of Beverly Hills, and later filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Garcia and Gibraltar in late 1985 worked out an agreement for the center to add horse stalls, a tack shop and retail stores to ensure it could draw enough business to become successful. None of these additions has been made. The agreement also was based in part on the health club’s being built and the addition of other improvements.

Commissioners Friday indicated that their change of heart was because they feared that, even with the construction of a health club, the center might not become financially viable and the city could end up with both the center’s existing facilities and a new health club on its hands.

“Do we have enough assurance that this health club will guarantee the financial success of the center?” Commissioner J. Stanley Sanders asked. “Will the city possibly be stuck with a white elephant if the center goes under?” he wondered.

Mary D. Nichols, commission vice president, said she had recently talked to several horse riders in the Griffith Park area who had questioned the building of a health club at the equestrian center.

“Nobody I talked to thinks a health club there makes any sense,” Nichols said. “They say, ‘Who cares? It’s not going to enhance the equestrian center.’ ”

At Friday’s meeting, representatives of the Sierra Club and other neighborhood groups also expressed opposition to the proposed health club.

Its establishment would “set a dangerous precedent by encouraging the private use of facilities on publicly owned land,” said Elizabeth G. Reifsnider, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter.