Neighbors Cry Foul on Condo Project Pact
A development agreement once heralded as the high point in relations between homeowners and builders in Woodland Hills has collapsed because bulldozers have turned the site into just that: a high point.
Residents living next to a 45-acre condominium project claim they were misled into endorsing it after five years of negotiations with developers because they were never told that the town houses would be built on 25-foot-high pads.
“The way it’s turned out, it looks like a fortress,” said Stan Greenfield, a 28-year resident of the neighborhood. “The condo units will be looking down into all our homes.”
Dirt for the pads has come from a 300-foot-tall hill that was near the center of the site at the northeast corner of Shoup Avenue and Oxnard Street, just west of Warner Center. The late west San Fernando Valley cultural leader Kay Beachy lived on the hill.
‘We Were Duped’
Homeowners say they were told that the hill would only be flattened slightly and tennis courts would sit atop it. They say they were led to believe the remainder of the Beachy estate would remain the same height as their neighborhood.
“We were really duped,” said Jerry Nedler, a 23-year resident and one of dozens of homeowners involved in the negotiations.
“They’ve pulled a fast one,” said neighbor Larry Houston, who has lived for 14 years in the neighborhood that is now beneath the building pads.
Homeowners say their years of negotiations resulted in the density of the condominium project being cut by more than 50%--from a potential of about 1,600 units to 760. It also led to height limits on the town house structures themselves.
“They discussed with us how far the building setbacks would be and how wide the roads would be,” said Greenfield. “We argued whether the buildings would be 31 or 32 feet high. But nobody ever said, ‘Don’t worry about the height because the whole building is going to be on a pad that’s 30 feet in the air.’
Greenfield and the other angry homeowners are demanding that the project be halted. They want Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus--whose office helped referee the negotiations--to require that the site be regraded.
The dispute has caught Picus by surprise.
In 1984, she had pledged to help residents fight what she termed “incompatibility with the surrounding area and vagueness” of an earlier proposal. She vowed to work until there was a project “that we can all take pride in.”
Six months ago, Picus wrote the residents that “construction is beginning . . . we can all be proud of the results, which ensure the development is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood.”
Picus said Wednesday it appears to her that the developer is “doing what they said they’d do” at the site.
She is willing to review the matter, Picus said. But “if they followed the agreement that was signed off by the homeowners” and then approved by the city, there is not much the city can do now to change the project.
“It was a model agreement. I wanted it to hold up,” Picus said of the pact signed in 1986.
There was disagreement Wednesday as to whether plans showing 25-foot-tall building pads were those endorsed by the residents, however.
An official of the development company involved in negotiations before the property changed hands last year said his plans called for building pads of varying heights for the site.
“Mine was a contoured building concept, not something on top of a flat 25-foot pad,” said Mike Sondermann, managing general partner of Lincoln Property Co. “Just from the appearance of the site, it appears that the community might be getting something different than what we proposed.”
Willing to Meet
Sondermann said he is willing to meet again with homeowners to show them his original plans. “If there was a mistake or misinterpretation, I would hope the community and the developer could work out a compromise,” he said of the current project plans.
Developer Dan Palmer Jr., whose G.H. Palmer Associates took over the project last year from Sondermann, refused to comment on the controversy.
But architect Manny Gonzales, whose firm did design work for Palmer at the site, said the grading plan was one that Palmer obtained from Sondermann.
Gonzales said the dirt from the bulldozed hill had to be graded into pads because the homeowners demanded during negotiations that trucks not be allowed to haul it out on their streets.
“If there was a misunderstanding on the grading, it had to do with what we inherited,” Gonzales said. Of the homeowners, he added: “We did not hide anything from them.”
Jim Dawson, chief land-use deputy to Picus, agreed. He said Palmer’s grading plan for the condominium project is identical to Sondermann’s.
Dawson said Woodland Hills homeowners were provided tract plans that showed grading and terrain changes with common engineering symbols and in feet.
“The information was there. They never seemed to consider it an issue,” Dawson said.
