Developers Gaining Ground in the Battle of Warner Ridge
For 10 months, the rallying cry in a Woodland Hills neighborhood next to a prominent vacant hillside has been “homes, not high-rises.”
But homeowners are now crying foul over two apparent setbacks to their campaign to block a $150-million office development so that luxury single-family houses can be built on the hillside instead.
A long-awaited environmental impact report issued this week concluded that the office project will have little detrimental effect on the 1,300-home neighborhood next door.
And developers who have been negotiating with neighborhood leaders over the project have announced that they are sticking with office buildings and will not consider building homes.
The nine-building “Warner Ridge” project calls for buildings up to seven stories high on a 21 1/2-acre site at the northeast corner of DeSoto Avenue and Oxnard Street. The ridge marks the eastern edge of the Warner Center commercial area and adjoins both the neighborhood of homes and vacant Pierce College agricultural land.
Before construction can begin, however, the development partnership, the Spound Co. of Los Angeles and the Johnson Wax Development Corp. of Racine, Wis., must obtain a pair of zoning changes and an amendment to Los Angeles’ master plan.
Homeowners managed to stall city action on the zone-change request in October, when they protested that they had been kept in the dark about the project until a few days before the city zoning hearing.
After that, the environmental review and talks between the developers and the homeowners were requested by City Councilwoman Joy Picus. This week, city planning officials said they expect to resume discussions on the zoning next month.
Homeowners said Friday they plan to step up their fight against the office buildings.
“I think the environmental impact report is seriously flawed,” said Robert J. Gross, a neighborhood leader and a vice president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.
“From Day 1, the concern of the community has been the intrusion of commercial development east of DeSoto Avenue adjacent to residential and agricultural space. Our concern has only been increased by the EIR. We feel it should be residential.”
But homes on the hillside are out of the question, according to the developers.
“The view people would have is rooftops of industrial buildings and rusty air conditioners down below in Warner Center,” said Mitchell K. Brown, development manager for the Johnson Wax Development Corp. “The exposure is to the west, toward industrial land and high-rise buildings. That’s not the type of view that someone wants from his home.”
On the other hand, Brown said, the families living in Gross’ 26-year-old neighborhood will not be affected by the view of his office development.
“Our buildings will rise and fall with the ridge line,” he said. “We plan to keep the buildings down below the top of the ridge line.”
Co-developer Jack Spound said only two of the nearby families will look down upon the office buildings. Landscaping is planned to screen that view, he said.
Brown and Spound said they are angry over flyers printed by residents that include a sketch depicting overwhelming buildings and a cascade of cars pouring from the site, once the location of a ranch belonging to movie mogul Harry Warner.
The development proposal calls for parking garages to be nestled into the ridge, virtually out of the sight of homeowners, Spound said. He said that earthen berms will be created and then landscaped with trees to shield the office complex from Pierce College farm land at the northeast of the site.
“We don’t think it’s going to interrupt any views. We believe that a 9-to-5 clean office use is the only use to make people happy. Residential development there is a dead issue,” Spound said.
Brown and Spound said they have spent hours meeting with nearby homeowners. They said they have incorporated residents’ suggestions in the current office-project plan.
The environmental impact report, prepared for the city by a consultant hired by Brown and Spound, concludes that a series of mitigating measures will minimize the project’s intrusion on the area.
The report states that the ridge, along with the berms and landscaping, will screen the new development. It predicts that the project will not add to overall noise, air quality or parking problems.
The assessment concludes that the office complex would generate about 9,000 vehicle trips a day, an amount that could significantly add to traffic problems at nine intersections in the Warner Center area. But widening streets and revising traffic patterns, which the developers would pay for, would help remedy those problems, the report stated.
According to the homeowners’ Gross, the environmental report may be misleading.
Spound and Brown “hired the consultants who wrote it. Those are their words, and they can slant wording any way they want it to read,” Gross said.
Residents will now hire their own professional consultant to review the report and help them refute it, he said.
“The height of the buildings will absolutely intrude on us,” Gross said. “Traffic from it will affect us.
“We’re very concerned about the intrusion of commercial development across DeSoto Avenue for the first time. It could be a domino thing, with Pierce College land being next. Our concern hasn’t been changed.”
Gross said homeowners aren’t giving up on Spound and Brown, either. “We hope to meet with them as soon as we’ve had an opportunity to evaluate their draft EIR,” he said.
