Chef Puck’s Brewery Plans Go Flat After Vote

A Los Angeles City Council committee has delivered a sharp blow to plans by chef Wolfgang Puck and partners for a combination beer brewery and restaurant in West Los Angeles. The three-member Planning and Environment Committee voted Tuesday to support residents who say the planned brewery and restaurant at 1845 S. Bundy Drive will bring drunk drivers, noise and late-night traffic into their neighborhood.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said traffic from the 214-seat restaurant and bar would affect residents since the only driveway to the site is not on Bundy Drive, but on Nebraska Avenue, a side street.

“There have got to be a number of alternative sites that will work well for the business,” said Galanter, who suggested that Puck investigate sites she said are available in Venice.

Galanter and Councilman Michael Woo voted to support the residents’ appeal of the restaurant’s conditional use permit, which now goes before the full 15-member council for a final decision March 16. Councilman Hal Bernson, chairman of the committee, withheld his vote until he can visit the site.

Andrew Hoffman, vice president of the Los Angeles Brewing Co., said the Bundy Drive site is the only one the company has found that meets its zoning, space and parking needs.

No Alternative Sites

“We have looked for alternative locations,” he said. “There just don’t exist spaces for (a business like) this.”

The company wants to brew a German-type lager it envisions as the signature beer of Los Angeles and to showcase it through a Wolfgang Puck restaurant featuring international “beer food,” such as Chinese baby back ribs, Mexican quesadillas and American hamburgers.

Last November, the city Board of Zoning Appeals overturned an earlier ruling by the zoning administrator against the restaurant’s application for a liquor permit. It is the board’s action that residents are appealing.

The board stipulated a number of strict conditions Hoffman and his company had to follow, including limiting the number of seats to 120 before 6:30 p.m., providing 150 parking spaces at night and offering free valet parking.

Hoffman said the company has agreed to the conditions, even offering to build a parking structure on the site.

“We have granted concessions that could cost us as much as $500,000 initially and as much as $200,000 a year,” he said.

But Hoffman said every attempt to work with the community to resolve their differences has been rebuffed.

“It’s sad,” he said. “We have a real conscience for what we’re doing. We really want to work with the community, but the community has not wanted to work with us.”

Puck agreed, saying he was disappointed by both the committee’s decision and the neighbors’ opposition.

“Obviously, if I am going to have a restaurant, I want to be friends with the people around us,” he said. “I want them to be my customers.”

But the residents, many of them Japanese-Americans who have lived there since returning from World War II relocation camps, have said meeting with the brewing company would only result in compromise, and the residents don’t want to compromise.

Late Operating Hours

Bill Sakurai, a resident of Amherst Avenue near the proposed restaurant, said he and his neighbors are particularly opposed to a restaurant, especially one that serves alcohol, because of its late operating hours.

Other businesses at the site may disrupt the neighborhood during the day and during rush hours, “but at least at nighttime we can have peace,” he said.

Sakurai and about two dozen other residents attended Tuesday’s meeting to show their opposition to the restaurant. They were supported by Jean M. Ushijima, president of the West Los Angeles chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, a civil rights group, and Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents their district.

Braude made a presentation before the committee urging that the restaurant be blocked from the site.

“I think it went just the way we hoped it would,” said Chester Fukai, an Amherst Avenue resident who has spearheaded opposition to the restaurant. “I feel very certain that we’re going to win the case.”