Businesses Are Told to Heed Growth Caps or Pay Price

Business people who do not become more sensitive to increasing concerns about growth and its problems will pay a high price in further restrictions on development, the city’s planning director told San Fernando Valley business leaders Friday.

Speaking in Van Nuys to about 160 members of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., planner Kenneth C. Topping had kind words for key goals--less density, sign control and stiffer parking requirements--of the city’s burgeoning slow-growth movement.

Topping said that, if traffic flow and air quality don’t improve in Los Angeles, residents will force a halt to development through the courts or the ballot box. If that happens, he said, businesses will look elsewhere “to avoid the hassle of locating here.”

Developers must pay more attention to the “qualitative aspects of life, or growth will be stopped,” he said.

The planning director, who was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley and confirmed by the City Council 11 months ago, said large-scale growth and the resulting congestion constitute “the No. 1 issue of the day in the city.”

He said his department is in the midst of a three-year program to “downzone,” or reduce density, in large areas of the city, in response to a court ruling that requires consistency in community plans and zoning rules.

In almost all cases, planners are recommending that the more restrictive community plans become law rather than the more permissive ones, he said.

“Homeowners love it,” Topping said. “Those in the commercial and industrial sectors don’t necessarily like it, any more than they liked Proposition U.”

That proposition, sponsored by Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude and opposed by business interests, halved allowable density on about 80% of the commercial parcels in the city.

Taken as a Signal

Passage of the proposition by nearly 70% of voters in November was taken as a signal by many in city government that a homeowner revolt against development is under way.

That view was buttressed in council elections Tuesday, when environmentalist Ruth Galanter easily ousted Council President Pat Russell after a campaign in which the challenger attacked the longtime Westside councilwoman as the ally of developers.

In answering questions, Topping had little encouragement for business leaders who worry that tougher parking requirements will make development unprofitable. “The trend citywide is toward higher parking requirements,” he said.

In regard to the battle in the council to reduce billboards and on-site signs, Topping said sign proliferation in the city is “so fundamentally overdone that it is virtually impossible in some areas for the eye to catch sight of a particular establishment.”

He said Los Angeles’ sign clutter reminds him of the adage, “When everybody shouts, nobody can hear.”

Carla Gazzolo, chairwoman of the association’s land-use committee, said in an interview after Topping’s speech that business leaders are “increasingly concerned about opposition to growth and are trying to be a little more vigilant” by getting named to advisory committees and by meeting with councilmen.

On the other hand, she said, large employers in the Valley are “more and more concerned about congestion, because they feel it might inhibit economic growth.”