Court Blocks Appeal of Studio City Building Height

The developer of a controversial Studio City office building Tuesday obtained a court order blocking the fight homeowners have been waging in City Hall against the “three-story” structure that they argue is seven stories high.

A Superior Court judge ordered residents to suspend a series of appeals to Los Angeles officials over the building’s size until the validity of a 1980 agreement concerning the building’s site is reviewed.

The preliminary injunction by Judge Robert B. Lopez was delivered to lawyers for both homeowners and builder Eitan Gonan as city building and safety commissioners met in City Hall to review a new round of appeals from residents.

The court order arrived as members of the City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee were meeting elsewhere in City Hall to discuss new restrictions on similar buildings in the Studio City area.

“The bottom line is, it enjoins either of us from participating in this hearing,” Gonan’s attorney, Elwood Lui, told Building and Safety Commission members after being handed a copy of Lopez’s ruling.

Concurred Daniel M. Shapiro, a lawyer for the homeowners: “Neither one of us can make a presentation to you.”

With the new appeals, the homeowners had hoped to challenge the square footage of the building. Last month, commissioners sidestepped the issue of the building’s height.

Lui and other lawyers representing Gonan sought the injunction after deciding that the 1980 pact--between homeowners and a previous owner of the office site at Fairway Avenue and Ventura Boulevard--still applies to Gonan. A court hearing to determine the legality of the agreement will be held Sept. 23.

That agreement would have allowed the previous landowner to build a structure that was six stories or 75 feet tall. Gonan’s building permit allows for a three-story, 45-foot-high building--although homeowners contend that a provision in the city law has allowed him actually to build seven stories 95 feet high, ruining their view of the San Fernando Valley.

Tuesday’s injunction also leaves in limbo a lawsuit filed Friday by homeowners against the city. That suit alleges that the city erred in counting a raised landscaping planter as the ground level when determining the Fairway Building’s height. It also alleges that the city improperly allowed construction to occur without a valid building permit.

The Planning and Environment Committee, meantime, instructed city planners to study a council proposal made two weeks ago by Studio City council representatives Joel Wachs, John Ferraro and Michael Woo. They asked for elimination of provisions in the law that give height bonuses to buildings being constructed on sloping lots.

Homeowners contend that the provisions used by Gonan are loopholes that may soon be utilized by other developers who own land on the steep south side of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City.

Woo--who has called for the removal of the top two floors of the Fairway Building--also took new steps Tuesday to combat the structure.

He sent a letter to Frank V. Kroeger, superintendent and general manager of the Building and Safety Department, asking that the city belatedly conduct a “full environmental review” of the Fairway Building, focusing on the impact of its height on the neighborhood and on traffic safety at the Fairway-Ventura intersection.

If necessary, Woo urged, the city should require a complete environmental impact report--which could delay the opening of the nearly completed $4.3-million office building for months.