Friends of Westwood Lawsuit Against L.A.

It may seem like the demented ravings of a wounded developer when I say this, but I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway. Notwithstanding the current thinking of everyone from the California Supreme Court on down, I respectfully disagree with the decision of the Supreme Court in this case. As a professional urban planner with 16 years of experience in both the public and private sector of the development community, and as an individual who has been intimately associated with the environmental evaluation and reporting process prior to the Friends of Mammoth decision, it is clear to me that the California Supreme Court has created an aberrant ruling which flies directly in the face of prior court rulings and in fact the original and subsequent legislative intent of CEQA and all its modifications. A review of the original legislation in 1970 and subsequent modifications, will show that the Legislature’s intent was to protect the quality of the natural environment and to ensure that new development would be satisfactorily evaluated in terms of its impact on that environment.

As has been stated many times, both in the interpretation of the CEQA guidelines and the legislative processes which have been used to modify it over the years, it is clear that the Legislature intends that purely environmental concerns relating to the natural environment be evaluated, and that the emphasis of the environmental review be placed on non-urban areas, not fully developed areas of the city (such as the urbanized Westwood Village area) in which no “natural environment” has existed for years.

It seems extremely clear that the problem which caused the Friends of Westwood decision to come about is not a fault of the environmental review process, but one of the planning process and the regulatory controls in place. If the city of Los Angeles is concerned about the relationship of commercial development to the surrounding residential areas, it can provide an overlay zone or a buffer zone within which developers must conform to performance guidelines. I believe that these guidelines can be so drafted as to make it unnecessary to have the Planning Commission and Council involved in virtually every development decision. The principle is clear: When you have a planning problem you cannot attack it with environmental regulations.

RONALD C. MAYHEW

Hermosa Beach