Bid for More Ma Maison Parking Fails Again

For the second time in two months, Westside homeowner groups have failed to persuade city officials to force the developer of the Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel to build a second parking structure. Residents have been pushing for the garage because they fear hundreds of cars from the hotel will spill over into nearby neighborhoods.

A Los Angeles City Council committee on Monday rejected without discussion homeowner demands for a 257-space parking garage to supplement the nearly completed hotel’s 328-space subterranean garage. The decision came during a public hearing on the hotel’s request for a conditional use permit to serve alcoholic beverages.

Several homeowner leaders said after the hearing that they will take their demands to the full City Council on July 27 when the council is scheduled to vote on the permit request. The homeowners have argued that the hotel should not get the permit if it does not provide the additional parking.

$50-Million Hotel

“They didn’t even consider our proposal,” an incredulous Diana Plotkin of the Beverly-Wilshire Homes Assn. said after the committee meeting. “We got no long-term solution to the parking problems.”

Added Sandy Brown of Friends of Westwood: “We got screwed.”

The $50-million luxury hotel--plagued by delays and cost overruns--is scheduled to open in September at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega boulevards. Developer Sheldon Gordon has rejected suggestions that he build a second garage, saying it would be unnecessary and too costly.

At Monday’s hearing, the Planning and Environment Committee voted to require Gordon to lease 117 off-site parking spaces within 18 months of opening and to squeeze 383 spaces into the 328-space garage. The committee also voted to reduce by 40% the total occupancy of the hotel’s restaurants, meetings rooms and banquet facilities in a further effort to address parking problems. The occupancy of the hotel’s 311 guest rooms was not affected.

The committee’s decision roughly followed conditions imposed in May by the Board of Zoning Appeals, which also rejected the homeowners’ parking structure proposal.

Key Provisions

Board members said they doubted they could legally require Gordon to build the garage as a condition for a permit to serve alcohol. Gordon has estimated that the 257-space garage would cost $2.5 million.

But the committee’s action deviated from the board’s ruling on several key points. Most significant, the appeals board included a provision rejected by the committee that would have allowed the hotel to increase the occupancy of its banquet and other facilities if it provided more off-site parking. Under the board approval, the hotel would have been able to increase the occupancy from 678 to 1,160 people if it found 241 additional parking spaces.

At the urging of Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the council panel placed a cap on the occupancy levels, effectively freezing the total occupancy at 678 people. Yaroslavsky, who has been criticized by some homeowners for not supporting their parking garage proposal, argued that the occupancy limit will do more to protect neighborhoods by permanently keeping 482 potential visitors--the difference between 678 and 1,160--away from the hotel.

Councilman Replies

“What (the homeowners) don’t realize is that they are advocating a set of conditions that would nearly double the traffic that the hotel generates during the mealtime hours of lunch and dinner,” Yaroslavsky said in an interview. “I believe the community in that area, not just the immediate area but also the people who drive there every day, would prefer to have less traffic than they would (more) parking spaces.”

But Plotkin, Brown and others complain that occupancy limits are meaningless because they are difficult to enforce. Although the committee instructed the Fire Department to monitor the occupancy levels, the homeowners said they fear the department does not have enough staff to do an adequate job. Even if violations were to be detected, they complained, it would take years to revoke the hotel’s alcohol permit because of required hearings and inevitable court challenges.

“The way this is set up, we, the community, will have to be the policemen,” Plotkin said in an interview. “The burden shouldn’t have to fall on the community. There should be a self-enforcing solution--a parking garage.”

Plotkin vented most of her anger on Yaroslavsky, whom she and fellow homeowner leader Harald Hahn have consistently blamed for the hotel’s parking problems. They have asserted that Yaroslavsky should have pressured Gordon to build a larger parking garage two years ago when he applied for his building permit.

“Councilman Yaroslavsky has not represented us as far as the Ma Maison Hotel is concerned,” Plotkin said. “He has done absolutely nothing for the community.”

Minority Voice

Yaroslavsky, who has said he was powerless to require a larger parking garage, said in the interview that Plotkin and Hahn are “well-intentioned” but unrepresentative of the community’s true sentiments about the hotel.

“I think if you ask the people who live in the neighborhood, not just the people who have chosen to speak for it, they prefer to reduce the occupancy load of the hotel, and thereby reduce both parking and traffic,” said Yaroslavsky, himself a resident of the area. “These people have basically decided to speak for the neighborhood and have not included anybody who doesn’t agree with them.”

Burt Pines, an attorney for the hotel, also accused Plotkin, Hahn, Brown and Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, of presenting a “one-sided view” of the community’s feelings about the hotel. At Monday’s hearing, Pines presented a petition with the signatures of 284 residents near the hotel, three of whom attended Monday’s hearing, saying it would be “unfair and premature” to require the hotel to provide more parking.

“Their voices just don’t seem to be heard,” Pines said in an interview.

In the Same Corner

Ironically, Yaroslavsky’s push to freeze the occupancy level at 678 people has pushed the homeowners and the hotel’s developer into the same corner on that issue. Pines said the developer also opposes the freeze. Although the hotel does not intend to build a second parking garage, he said Gordon would like the flexibility to increase the occupancy levels by leasing more parking.

“Our client is willing to accept the reduced occupancy, but he has always wanted the ability to increase that if more parking is secured,” Pines said in an interview. The 40% occupancy reduction would cost the hotel about $1 million a year in lost revenues, he said.

Yaroslavsky said, however, that he will not back down from the freeze, which he described as the linchpin of his proposal. But in the end, Yaroslavsky may not even be able to vote on his own plan when it goes to the council on July 27. Yaroslavsky was one of five people who appealed the Board of Zoning Appeal’s ruling on the alcohol permit request. The city attorney’s office has notified Yaroslavsky that his role in the appeal may disqualify him from voting as a councilman.