Bradley Calls for Less Drastic Curbs on New Building

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, declaring that growth and congestion have become matters of great public concern, Friday made a broad policy statement on city planning that recommends new curbs on development but rejects the more drastic measures proposed by the City Council’s leading proponents of slowed growth.

Bradley called for “vigorous and fair enforcement of Proposition U,” a ballot measure that limits commercial growth in much of the city and which Bradley had opposed before voters overwhelmingly approved it last November. On Friday, Bradley also advocated the formation of neighborhood planning councils and said the city Planning Department would be reorganized to stress long-range planning.

In addition, the mayor said he favors new limits on mini-malls, which have proliferated amid widespread public indignation. He urged passage of a proposed slope-density ordinance that would curtail building in hillside neighborhoods. He stated his support for a pending ordinance, proposed by City Council President Pat Russell, that would require developers to help pay for new methods of reducing traffic. And Bradley said he soon would be appointing members of a new committee to promote growth and development in disadvantaged parts of town.

Bradley emphasized that his policies are not aimed at stopping growth, but at managing it.

“We will continue to grow. That is the American destiny,” he said. The mayor’s speech contained little that has not been proposed in the past, but it did mark the first time he has called attention in a public speech to issues related to growth and city planning that have been the subject of intense debate in the City Council and in neighborhood forums for more than a year.

“These are issues that used to float beneath the areas of great public concern, but recently have captured the public’s attention and imagination,” Bradley said, speaking at an American Telephone & Telegraph Co. employees’ forum.

The passage of Proposition U in November brought that concern into focus, with 70% of the voters supporting the measure that cut by half the allowable size of new commercial buildings in areas close to residential neighborhoods.

But as he opposed Proposition U, Bradley again has parted company with the authors of the ballot measure, Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky. Bradley said he is against a proposal by the two councilmen that would give the City Council authority to veto any new commercial building containing 50,000 square feet or more, even when such buildings comply with the city’s zoning code.

Bradley said that the proposal, the key element of a 10-point slow-growth plan introduced last December, would make the process of approving new construction so unpredictable that it would discourage building in the city.

Braude and Yaroslavsky, quick to respond to the mayor, held a press conference Friday afternoon at which they argued that city policy on growth is doomed to failure if it does not address the impact of large-scale construction.

“On balance, the critical issue is not there,” Braude said of the mayor’s set of proposals.

“The key issue facing the future of the city is what to do about major construction projects,” Yaroslavsky said. “Any proposal that doesn’t recognize we have a problem in that area is not serious.”