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Flores’ Suggestion to L.A. in Harbor City Land Flap: Buy It

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Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores has proposed a way to solve a long-festering dispute between Harbor City residents and a developer who wants to put up a three-unit building in their single-family neighborhood.

The city, Flores has suggested, should buy the developer’s land.

In a motion passed unanimously by the City Council this week, Flores directed the city attorney to contact developer William Freeman to find out if he is interested in selling the lot at 1615 W. 262nd St. in the Harbor Pines section of Harbor City.

The motion is preliminary, however, and only authorizes city officials to negotiate with Freeman and to appraise his land if he is amenable to selling.

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Freeman, however, said in an interview Thursday that while he would sell if the city came up with the right price, he is certain that a city appraiser’s estimate of the 5,009-square-foot lot would be far below its worth, given the time and money he has put into his project.

Freeman paid $153,000 for the property that included a single-family house, which he razed, in February, 1986, but declined to discuss its current value. “I’m sure I could be bought out,” he said, “but good grief, to suggest that we’d even get close (to an agreement on the price) would be ludicrous.”

Freeman’s proposed development is at the center of a zoning dispute that goes back to April, 1987, when the city stopped him from building a 10-unit hotel at the site.

Although the lot is in a residential neighborhood, it backs onto commercial Anaheim Street, and is zoned for commercial development. Freeman initially proposed building the hotel and was given the necessary building permits. But residents balked, saying the community plan, which differed from the zoning, did not allow the hotel.

After a lengthy series of zoning appeals, negotiations and a Superior Court lawsuit, Freeman agreed to scale his project down to three apartments. He said he intends to sell the units as condominiums.

Freeman said the building was purposely designed to fit in with the residential neighborhood.

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“It looks like a large single-family residence with a three-car garage . . . ,” he said. “I am not going to contaminate the environment with three condominiums. My conscience is clear on that one.”

But in her motion, Flores said that even a three-unit development “is inappropriate and constitutes an inappropriate land use for this area.”

The councilwoman has always maintained that Freeman was given permission to build as a result of an incorrect zoning map. Her spokeswoman, Karen Constine, said spending public funds to buy the developer out is justifiable--even in a city where money is tight--in order to rectify that error.

The Motion Passed

Members of the City Council passed the motion without discussion Tuesday. They did not talk about whether a buyout plan would be the best use of public funds.

But George Buchanan, a senior assistant city attorney present when the council voted, seemed cautious about the proposal. “We’ll have to discuss what the public purpose is of acquiring that property when we reach that point, if we reach that point,” he said at the meeting.

Constine suggested the city could rezone the property for single-family development and then resell it. She rebuffed a suggestion that such a downzoning would decrease the property’s value.

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“We don’t think so, because the area is a single-family nature and keeping it that way is going to make the property more valuable,” she said, adding that “if the city holds onto the land for a while it should see a profit or at least break even.”

Countered Freeman: “That is the most ludicrous statement I have heard this year--and last year. . . . A three-unit condo site is worth more money than a single-family site, and the value goes up proportionally.”

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