Grappling With Growth : Neighborhood Victory Against Harbor City Hotel Endangered

It was, in the truest sense, a grass-roots effort.

Without any formal neighborhood organization, the residents of the Pines section of Harbor City banded together last year to block development of a 10-room hotel in their residential neighborhood, so named because of the trees that line its hilly streets.

They went door-to-door handing out flyers. They wrote letters to City Hall. They hired a lawyer and rented buses to shuttle them to a series of tedious zoning hearings--in San Pedro, Van Nuys and downtown Los Angeles. They didn’t even have to solicit financial contributions. People just offered.

When they won before the city Board of Zoning Appeals in October, victory tasted sweet.

But it may have been short-lived.

In one of several new developments, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge last month ordered the Board of Zoning Appeals to reconsider developer William Freeman’s request to build his hotel. Judge Dion Morrow suggested that the board improperly considered new evidence at the October hearing, and said the board failed to clearly state the reasons for its decision, which he called uncertain, vague and ambiguous.

This week, the city filed notice that it is appealing Morrow’s decision. “We thought the board’s action was proper and defensible and we’re going to defend it,” said Deputy City Atty. Michael S. Woodward.

In an effort to settle the dispute, Freeman this week proposed revising his plans for the lot at 1615 W. 262nd St. He has proposed to build a 10-unit condominium complex for senior citizens. He said Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores’ office will review the plan and present it to the neighbors.

Meanwhile, residents of the Pines--many of whom apparently still think their battle ended five months ago--are once again “hanging in the balance.”

That is the assessment of Martin Lonky, an aerospace physicist and Pines resident who is acting as spokesman for the neighborhood.

“This neighborhood is so proud of the fact that when an issue arises they stand up as a group,” Lonky said. However, he added, because there is no formal community organization, many residents of the Pines are not aware of the turn the case has taken. Residents who have kept up with the case agree.

But Lonky and the others say that if the city loses the appeal, they expect the community to rally again when the case goes back to the Board of Zoning Appeals. Residents say they are concerned about a decline in their property values, about traffic generated by the hotel, and about the kind of clients the hotel might draw.

“We’re not going to give up,” said Sis Bethurem, who lives across the street from the proposed hotel. “We can’t afford to.”

At the center of the debate is a 5,009-square-foot piece of land with a complicated history--a history that involves bickering arms of city government, their differing interpretations of city zoning maps and their attempts to overrule one another.

Freeman purchased the lot and a house on it in February, 1986, for $153,000 from a couple who moved a few houses away. According to the sales and escrow agreements on file at the zoning board, Freeman bought the house with plans to add a second story. He wanted the sale to go through quickly.

“All parties are aware and understand that a building moratorium and potential downzone are on the horizon and that time is of the essence,” the agreement said.

Although 262nd Street is primarily residential, it is at the edge of the Pines neighborhood. Anaheim Street, a commercial thoroughfare, is the next street north. Freeman’s lot has a single-family residence on one side and a commercial property--a nursery--on the other. Freeman’s lot is zoned for commercial development, but some officials interpret the Wilmington-Harbor City District Plan to call for it to remain low-density residential.

Freeman said that when he bought the land he did not know about the possible conflict. He said he decided against building a second-story addition and keeping the house for himself because the house faced an uphill street and he feared a car would crash into it.

Instead, Freeman requested permission from the Department of Building and Safety last March to build a 10-unit apartment building. By this time a moratorium prohibiting apartments in the Wilmington-Harbor City area had gone into effect. So Freeman revised his proposal and asked to build a 10-unit hotel, which was permitted under the moratorium.

Freeman got his permit. He tore down the house and dug trenches for the hotel’s foundation.

But last April, officials at the Department of City Planning decided that the commercial zoning of the lot did not conform to the community plan, and said the Building and Safety Department should not have given Freeman a permit. Freeman was ordered to stop work.

Although the city is moving to resolve inconsistencies, the zoning in many areas does not conform to the more recently adopted community plans. In such cases, state law calls for the city to conduct a special “consistency review,” including public hearings, before issuing building permits.

No such review was held in Freeman’s case. Planning officials said they believe the permit was issued because the city’s map incorrectly showed that the zoning on Freeman’s property conformed to the community plan.

When the permit was revoked, Freeman appealed to a third city agency, the Office of Zoning Administration, which disagreed with the planners. Associate Zoning Administrator John J. Parker Jr. said the community plan was ambiguous and concluded that it intended Freeman’s property to be commercial. He said the permit issued by the Building and Safety Department was valid.

At that point, the neighbors and Councilwoman Flores appealed to the Board of Zoning Appeals, which reviews such rulings. The board reversed Parker’s decision in October, prompting residents to think they had won the case, and prompting Freeman to go to Superior Court.

According to court records, Freeman’s lawyer argued that the zoning board improperly considered new evidence, such as testimony from former city Planning Director Calvin Hamilton, who concurred with the neighbors, and the comments of the board chairwoman, who had visited the site.

“By no stretch of the imagination is this site appropriate for anything other than a single dwelling,” board Chairwoman Irene Olansky said at the October hearing. “Somewhere along the way, this site got lost.”

Act in Narrow Capacity

In Superior Court, Freeman’s lawyer, Kenneth Bley, argued that by law, the board members act in a very narrow capacity: They may only consider evidence that has come before the zoning administrator and may reverse the administrator only when he applies the law incorrectly or abuses his discretion.

“You may disagree with Parker’s conclusion,” Bley said in an interview, “but you can’t say that he was wrong as a matter of law or that he so abused his discretion such that he couldn’t possibly come to that conclusion. . . . They (board members) don’t have a legal right to disagree.”

“That’s where we part company,” countered Woodward, the deputy city attorney. Woodward said he does not believe the board took extra evidence into account and said he thinks the board was within its bounds in deciding that Parker had erred.

Bley said that if the case comes before the zoning board again, it will have to side with Freeman. But if the city wins its appeal, the original board decision barring the hotel will remain in effect.

For his part, Freeman says he will continue trying to get the “highest and best” use out of his land. “This is the periphery of a residential neighborhood,” he said. “This is the line where the commercial stops and the residential starts. The line has to stop and start somewhere.”

He also said he intends to continue developing commercial properties in Harbor City and on West 262nd Street, despite the opposition of the neighborhood. He said he has tried to work with the neighbors by offering proposals such as the one for the senior citizen complex, and has gotten nowhere.

“I don’t care about the people in Harbor Pines,” Freeman said. “They really don’t concern me. Their opposition to me--it’s an opinion. Any time a builder goes into a neighborhood the neighbors get upset.”