Uneasy Solution : Ventura Blvd. Neighbors Oppose Plan to Use Their Yards as Parking Lots

Never mind toothaches. Woodland Hills dentist Marvin R. Canter says he knows how to treat Ventura Boulevard’s throbbing parking headache.

He is urging Los Angeles officials to authorize homeowners living behind boulevard businesses to “instantaneously, without a hearing,” convert their yards into paved parking lots for use by shoppers and office workers.

A network of such lots along the entire length of the boulevard would quickly solve parking problems along the Valley’s southern edge without costing the city a penny, he said.

Canter’s proposal has been turned over to a special citizens committee that hopes to find long-range solutions to Ventura Boulevard’s traffic and parking problems later this year. In the meantime, city officials have quietly begun to sound out homeowners on the idea.

So far, the reaction has not been favorable.

Residents Groups Opposed

Members of Studio City Residents Assn., who reviewed the plan this week at the request of City Councilman Michael Woo’s office, oppose it. Woo represents part of the affected area.

A leader of the Homeowners of Encino property owners group has blasted it as a “self-serving scheme” to benefit merchants at the expense of residential property owners.

But Canter, who said he owns several parcels along the boulevard, disputes that contention. He said boulevard parking problems have grown steadily since he opened his office next to an empty field 20 years ago.

He said yard-size parking lots would benefit residential neighborhoods by removing parked cars from the streets and by serving as heavily landscaped, fenced buffers between houses and commercial businesses.

Developers would be required to erect six-foot-high walls, and special setbacks would separate the parking lots from homes, Canter said. Access to the lots would be from the boulevard; construction of buildings on the lots would be prohibited, he said.

“This is not a proposal meant to hurt homeowners or kick people out of their homes,” he said. “People could stay if they wanted to. But I have a feeling there would be a lot of selling.”

The key to the parking plan would be rezoning of R-1 residential lots to parking zones. The change, which would require City Council approval, would allow property owners to obtain permission for a parking lot for the asking, he said. Current city procedures require public hearings for zone changes or variances, a process that can take a year to complete.

“It doesn’t work with neighbor opposition,” Canter said of the current process. “It would only work if it were automatic.” He said numerous boulevard businessmen have tried without success to win city approval to convert nearby homes into parking lots.

Among those who have been turned down are the owners of Lautrec restaurant in Woodland Hills, according to manager Jay Regan, who said the restaurant’s owners purchased two houses on Costanso Street behind the business hoping to use them for parking.

“The city wasn’t even willing to discuss it,” Regan said.

Some Willing Sellers

Boulevard businessman Vic Harvey, a Woodland Hills real estate broker, said owners of many older, smaller homes may be willing to sell to neighboring merchants “and it might be cost-effective for both the buyer and the seller.”

But many homes on the south side of the boulevard might be too expensive, Harvey said. He said residents of the opposite side of the street probably would object to a parking lot, “no matter how it was disguised.”

Polly Ward, president of Studio City Residents Assn., said her group is “absolutely, unanimously opposed” to mixing parking lots with homes.

“Our association was formed 20 years ago around the issue of parking on parallel side streets and opposition to residential lots being bought and used as parking lots,” Ward said.

She said the group’s views have been made clear to Woo and to Councilmen Joel Wachs and John Ferraro, who also represent portions of Studio City.

Bennett Mintz, a director of Homeowners of Encino, has warned that the parking plan “would turn neighbor against neighbor and dramatically reduce property values of all homes on all streets adjacent to the boulevard.”

The proposal is expected to be taken up later this summer by the city’s 21-member boulevard advisory committee, said Marc Woersching, a city staff planner in charge of the group.

“There are arguments that can be made on both sides,” Woersching said. “It would alleviate a parking shortage. Adequate landscaping and buffering could make a surface lot acceptable.”

But, he added, “it could result in a very uneven pattern of land use, some with houses and some with parking. It might be considered rather poor zoning practice to eliminate the continuity of single-family housing.”

Added Woersching: “It would be like knocking holes in a row of teeth.”