Planners Order Redesign for Calabasas Development

A proposed $150-million Calabasas hotel and office project--criticized as too big and too ugly--was ordered redesigned Wednesday by Los Angeles County planners.

Planning commissioners said they want Ahmanson Commercial Development Co. to scale down the project planned for a 67-acre site next to exclusive Calabasas Park. The commissioners also want the developer to decrease the height of four 6-story buildings proposed.

The company had hoped to build 13 buildings, 8 parking structures and 5 surface parking lots at the southeast corner of the intersection of Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas. The project’s centerpiece was to have been a 250-room Calabasas Park Centre hotel and conference center.

The 1.7-million-square-foot project had been endorsed by the Calabasas Park Homeowners Assn. after Ahmanson agreed to preserve a hill at the edge of the site and promised to take steps to prevent traffic jams in the area. The hill serves as a buffer between a nearby residential neighborhood and the Ventura Freeway.

But Ahmanson’s proposed buildings were characterized Wednesday as “somewhat bleak” and “regimentally laid out” by Commissioner Clinton C. Ternstrom. He urged that the new project be “low-level and informal.”

Commission member Lee Strong added: “It seems the project itself is too large. It’s a development that belongs in downtown Los Angeles.”

Ahmanson Vice President William Loadvine said the project will be redesigned. He said his company will continue with plans to preserve the hill and pay into a county fund to help finance an improved Parkway Calabasas freeway interchange.

Loadvine disputed the contention that the project would be ugly, however. “It would be the finest development in the area . . . very expensive,” he said.

The county’s hard-line stance pleased Calabasas Park residents, including some who had supported the homeowner association’s negotiations with Ahmanson. The company at first had proposed 10-story buildings for the site, said association President Myra Turek.

The group’s endorsement was the result of “hopeless resignation” on the part of homeowners, resident Marcia Abad told commissioners.

“I want my little boy to see Calabasas the way it is--not homogenized like Los Angeles, but like a little Carmel,” Abad said, her voice breaking. “Six-story buildings are plain wrong. It’s greedy and it’s wrong.”