Council Panel OKs Smaller Expansion for the Pavilion

Developers of the Westside Pavilion suffered a major setback Tuesday in their plans to expand the West Los Angeles shopping mall.

The City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee, going against the recommendations of its staff and the Planning Commission, rejected a proposed 160,000-square-foot expansion of the complex, at Pico and Westwood boulevards.

Instead, the committee endorsed an expansion plan by City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky that limits expansion to 105,000 square feet and calls for 1,000 additional parking spaces and three new signals to ease parking and traffic problems that already plague the busy commercial intersection. The plan is expected to go before the City Council for final approval next week.

The planned expansion site is located on the west side of Westwood Boulevard and will be connected to the mall by a 43-foot-wide vehicular and pedestrian bridge.

City engineers said the bridge will eliminate as many as 650 cars from the streets during peak shopping hours.

“I think this is the best we could hope for,” said Yaroslavsky, who represents the area. “With the addition of the bridge and the 1,000 parking spaces, it is our one and only opportunity to solve the parking problems in the area, at no expense to the neighborhood.”

Officials of Westfield Inc., developers of the site, said they are disappointed with the committee’s decision because it means less space will be available to rent.

“I felt the scrutiny of the Planning Commission was very thorough and detailed, and I’m disappointed that this committee doesn’t see that,” said Richard Green, president of Westfield Inc. “Our plan made sense. Why would the commission approve it if it was detrimental to the community?”

The dozens of homeowners who attended the meeting in City Hall were divided in loyalty.

Some, like resident George R. Zanick, supported Westfield’s plan.

‘Form of Progress’

“The neighborhood has been cleaned up so much since the mall was built. It’s incredible,” he said. “There’s no way the expansion would cause us any problems, not with all the parking they wanted to put in. Everyone is complaining, and they have their right, but the mall is a form of progress and should not be stopped.”

Others, like Sara Berman of the West of Westwood Homeowners Assn., supported the committee’s decision and said, “Westfield’s plans for 160,000 square feet was much too big and would have created too much traffic.”

And still others, like Marilyn Tusher, supported neither.

Tusher, of the Westwood Gardens Civic Assn., opposed any expansion, saying homeowners have already suffered an increase in crime, a loss of privacy and frustrating traffic jams as a result of the mall, “and it has to stop now.”

Sandy Brown of the Friends of Westwood homeowners association, agreed. She said her group is especially opposed to the proposed bridge over Westwood Boulevard.

“The bridge is not going to alleviate the traffic problem, because the same traffic will have to go through the neighborhood to get onto or off of the bridge. It won’t just fly away, so there’s still going to be gridlock,” she said.

But, Councilman Hal Bernson, chairman of the planning and environment committee, said the mall’s expansion, including increased parking spaces and traffic lights, may be the best solution to those problems.

“Sometimes you have to support new developments in order to address the sins of the past,” he said.