Local News in Brief : Homeowners to Sue Over Lease at Pierce

A group of Woodland Hills homeowner activists said Friday that it will sue the Los Angeles Community College District over a lease with an Encino synagogue that is planning to develop 17.5 acres of vacant Pierce College land.

The district in 1986 leased the land to Shir Chadash, which plans to build a temple and retirement apartments on the property east of the West Valley Occupational Center between Victory Boulevard and Calvert Street.

The Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization does not oppose the temple but fears that the proposed 261 residential units will add to traffic congestion and consume needed open space, said Robert Gross, the group’s vice president.

Gross said the group plans to sue the district in an attempt to void the lease. He would not discuss specific legal objections.

Homeowners were angered Wednesday when the district’s Board of Trustees rejected their demands that the lease be broken.

At a meeting of about 75 homeowners Thursday night, the group’s president, Gordon Murley, said the trustees “are as insensitive to what goes on in your lives as anybody could be.”

Murley asked the members to contribute $100 each to a legal fund to finance the lawsuit.

Norman Schneider, a district spokesman, said the trustees Wednesday “made it very clear that the lease was done in a legal, proper, public fashion, and that everybody and anybody who might have been interested in the subject was informed. The temple and the district have a solid lease.”