Cries in the Canyon : Residents Say Bel-Air Project Shows Laxity in City Regulations

Long before the bulldozers began their march along the hillside and the daily drone of the grading equipment filled the air, Hoag Canyon in Bel-Air served as a natural barrier to the encroaching developments of the outside world.

Many developers tried and ultimately failed in their quest to build million-dollar homes along the lush canyon’s ridge, stymied by geologic problems posed by the rugged landscape in the Santa Monica Mountains and the political pressure generated by local conservationists.

But after eight years of negotiations with the local homeowners association, one determined developer decided to tackle the top of Hoag Canyon. When the deal was completed in 1985, local homeowners had agreed they would not oppose the 284-home Bel-Air Crest development, south of Mulholland Drive, just east of the San Diego Freeway, as long as all but nine homes were placed behind the mountain ridge, beyond their line of sight.

Feeling of Betrayal

Today, the ridge has been sliced and flattened by more than 1,000 feet and serves as the focus of “before” and “after” pictures taken by shaken hillside homeowners. The number of custom-home lots along the ridge has nearly quadrupled. And the members of the Roscomare Valley Assn. say they’ve been betrayed.

The scarred hillside in what is considered one of the most beautiful sections of the Santa Monica Mountains has become the center of a citywide battle over development project rules that, in many cases, allow developers to modify plans without notifying residents or holding public hearings.

“We were naive,” said writer/producer Mark Slade, head of the Save Hoag Canyon Committee, originally formed in the late 1970s. “We believed that the developer would follow the original agreement. Now, we’re at a point where we’re just trying to save as much of the canyon as we can. It took thousands of years to create that area, and then overnight it’s gone.”

The story of what has happened in Hoag Canyon mirrors in many ways the story of Los Angeles. It is the tale of two opposing forces--conservation-minded homeowners and business-minded developers--speeding toward an unavoidable conflict. And it is a story of deal-making and negotiations, trade-offs and compromise.

At its root, the story of Hoag (pronounced hog ) Canyon revolves around the complicated process involving tract maps, zoning ordinances, building modifications, and most important, the notification requirements for city officials involved in approving the plans.

“This case points out how you lose your neighborhood,” said Laura M. Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, a citizens group which represents more than 800 families in the 5th City Council District. “It just slips away from you in the middle of the night because no one was told.”

When the original public hearing on the Goldrich & Kest Industries development was scheduled, all property owners within 300 feet of the outside boundary of the project were notified, as required by law. The hearing was held after countless negotiation sessions with the developers, who wanted to construct the $250-million project with as little opposition as possible. In return for limiting the number of homes on the ridge top, members of the Roscomare Valley Assn. agreed not to oppose the development.

But just three months after the tentative tract map was approved in March, 1984, the Culver City-based developers requested a series of modifications to the development that increased the amount of grading on the ridge, increased the number of million-dollar-view lots on the top of the canyon and redesigned key segments of the project.

No notice of the modifications, which considerably changed the scope of the development that had taken nearly a decade to hammer out, ever went out to homeowners in the area.

City planning officials say it was an oversight. Even though the law doesn’t require them to send out hearing notices to residents in the neighborhood, they say they usually do. But in this case, none were sent.

“We just don’t know what happened in this case,” said Gary Morris, deputy director of the city Planning Department’s Advisory Agency. “For some reason, no notices went out. It just didn’t happen.”

Morris said that at the modification hearing, when the developers requested approval to lop off more of the ridge to make room for more lots, city planning officials never raised any concerns about the increased grading because they “were not aware of a concern about preserving this rather remote area in its natural condition.”

Unusually Large Grading

Two years passed before residents along Linda Flora Drive, which faces one side of the ridge, noticed that the grading seemed unusually large.

What tipped them off were the rooftops on the homes near Mountain Gate Country Club, on the other side of the canyon, east of the San Diego Freeway. When they agreed to the original development plans, they were told by the developer that only the rooftops would be visible across Hoag Canyon. Instead, the whole country club and its golf course are in full view.

The developer said he never thought he should let community residents know about changes in the plan because the modifications were so “slight.” Because the original development called for up to 500 homes on the ridge, developer Warren Breslow said, adding another 20 or 30 didn’t seem to matter much.

“I never gave it another thought,” said Breslow, a general partner at Goldrich & Kest. “It came as a big shock to me. At one time we were dealing with a concept of hundreds of houses (on the ridge), so when it increased, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Relative to what was going on, it was an insignificant change.”

Breslow claims that area homeowners were reacting in part to the strange site of bulldozers and heavy equipment arriving on the ridge. He said the homeowners never realized how big the development was.

Barbara Blinderman, a Beverly Hills land-use attorney who was hired by the Roscomare Valley Assn., said she applauds any attempt to change the rules that allow what happened in Hoag Canyon to happen regularly throughout Los Angeles.

“The assumption is that, apparently it’s easier to do business if you don’t tell everybody what you’re doing,” she said. “The city often acts like it’s a privilege granted to the community if they give them notification. But all it does is create a lot of real antagonism in the community.”

Blinderman is representing the homeowners association in its negotiations with Goldrich & Kest over the developers’ plan to add four more custom homes to the ridge top, bringing the total to 31. The latest modification will be the subject of a public hearing before city planners on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at City Hall.

$150,000 Offer

The negotiations between the two parties have dragged on since the enraged property owners first found out about the additional grading and the plan to add more lots. When they met with Breslow in the fall, the developer offered the association $150,000 in return for its support of the project.

Some of the homeowners called it hush money. Breslow called it an endowment for the community. The homeowners rejected the offer.

“It’s not an atypical way to handle homeowner situations,” Breslow said. “We want their support.”

The homeowners have rejected the offer but have been trying to persuade the developer to increase the amount of landscaping in the project and rebuild part of the ridge. The talks have dragged on for more than a month.

The planning problems exposed by the case of Hoag Canyon have ballooned far beyond the confines of the mountain area. Several officials from the Roscomare Valley Assn. and the Save the Hoag Canyon Committee have turned it into an election issue, vowing to campaign against Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s anticipated mayoral campaign next year.

Support for Lake

Westwood activist Lake, who has built a political career based on development watchdog organizations, is running for Yaroslavsky’s council seat, and many of Yaroslavsky’s former supporters have vowed to throw their support to her over the Hoag Canyon snafu.

“When we noticed that the hill was disappearing at an alarming rate, we were told by Zev and his staff that there was nothing to worry about, that there would only be minimal grading on the ridge,” said Slade. “This issue here is much larger. The issue here is who represents you when something like this happens. If you make a deal with your councilman and he helps you negotiate it, then he damn well better stand behind it.”

Slade, Leonard Vernan, veteran character actor Don Gordon and other area homeowners involved in the fight claim that Yaroslavsky’s office should have monitored changes in the development to ensure that it conformed with the original agreement. But Yaroslavsky and his staff say that they were never told of the modifications, either.

“All of us feel a little betrayed,” Yaroslavsky said. “There were certain conditions that were supposed to be lived up to and they weren’t. But I think the fault lies in the process and with the developer who used the process to his advantage.”

“The issue here really is whether the notification was adequate,” added Ginny Kruger, Yaroslavsky’s planning deputy. “And we don’t think it was.”

Widespread Problems

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said the problems with the notices and project modifications are so widespread that she has established a watchdog group in one area of her district to monitor new developments.

The committee, based in the Crenshaw area, takes its lead from groups such as the Sierra Club, which assign several individuals to monitor specific projects.

“Unless there is an organized procedure to handle it, it’s very difficult to keep up with all the changes in a particular project,” Galanter said. “We established the Crenshaw group as a way to make sure that if homeowners groups can’t find out about specific projects on their own that there is a mechanism in place to find out what they need to know.”

Hoag Canyon-area residents are concerned that what happened to the mountain ridge could happen to the rest of the Hoag Canyon. Goldrich & Kest donated about 350 acres of the canyon to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to be set aside as open space. An additional 400 acres, owned by Canadian-born millionaire Hymie Singer, is currently the subject of negotiations between the owner and the conservancy.

Joe Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, said that the fate of the remaining property in the canyon depends largely on whether Proposition 70, the statewide park bond act that would set aside $776 million for the acquisition of park and wildlife areas, passes this year. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is slated to receive $30 million if the measure passes.

Top Priority

Edmiston said that the conservancy board placed Hoag Canyon at the top of its priority list for acquisition in January. Last month, the board voted to appraise the parcel.

“The principal usage would be for trail hikes,” Edmiston said. “The views from the ridge top are fairly spectacular. That canyon is pretty rare in that three quarters of the area, you have an undisturbed watershed. There’s a lot of lush vegetation that you don’t usually see in the Santa Monica Mountains and we want to protect it if we can.”

However, Edmiston said that the key issue in Hoag Canyon is the question of notice. Without constant vigilance from area homeowners, he said, prime open space can be lost forever.

As a result of the Hoag Canyon case, Yaroslavsky has introduced a proposal that would change the notification requirements of the city Planning Department. The amendment would require city planners to notify homeowners within 500 feet of any new development boundary of any public hearings for project modifications.

In addition, Yaroslavsky’s measure would require the modification to be spelled out instead of being buried under reams of bureaucratic jargon, he said. No vote has been scheduled on the motion.

Election Backlash

Gordon blames city officials for what happened in Hoag Canyon and insists there will be a backlash come election time. He said that unless the rules are changed, “Los Angeles will be choked to death.”

“It seems to me that you just don’t allow one of the most scenic areas in Los Angeles to be cut down,” he said. “In 10 years, our children won’t even believe it when we tell them about all the great parks and mountain trails that we grew up with, because they’ll all be gone.

“What is happening here is that they’re killing the land and then pleading innocence. It’s like getting robbed and being hit over the head and then having the thief take you to the hospital.”