Group Wants Condos Torn Down

Asserting that they have proof that a hilltop condominium project is being illegally constructed, Woodland Hills residents demanded Saturday that city officials order the $7.5-million development torn down.

Homeowners said measurements made late Friday at the West Hills Condominiums construction site showed that a portion of the 24-unit project is being built too close to the property line and violates terms of a 1978 development agreement approved by Los Angeles city officials.

“We want it torn down,” said Sidney Perry, who has lived beneath the project’s hilltop for 30 years. “We will be asking on Monday that a stop-work order be issued until this can be resolved to everybody’s satisfaction.”

City building officials who approved the blueprints for the third and final phase of the 80-unit West Hills development Oct. 25 could not be reached for comment Saturday.

The condominium’s developer denied wrongdoing--and dismissed the residents’ demolition call.

‘Perfectly Comfortable’

“I’m perfectly comfortable that the city reviewed in minute detail every aspect of the plans,” said James R. Gary, a real estate broker who is a limited partner in the Ventura Boulevard project.

“They would not have given approval and stamped the plans and let the builder proceed with millions of dollars of construction if they hadn’t taken into account every aspect of the development,” he said.

Perry said the city’s 1978 approval of the project mandated that its final phase be separated from the site’s southern property line by a 134-foot landscaped buffer zone.

Most of the building meets that requirement, he said.

But residents discovered that a 121-foot-long section at the southeast corner of the partially built project fails to meet the setback requirement because of a slight jog in the property line at that corner, said Perry, who accompanied six of his neighbors to the site Friday to meet with Gary, co-partner Ed Dade and a city building inspector.

‘They Turned White’

“We measured it with a ruler on the plans, and then the inspector took the ruler and measured it. You should have seen the looks on their faces. They turned white,” Perry said.

Until Friday’s meeting, homeowners had feared that they had no choice but to accept the project--and the developers’ promises that heavy landscaping will eventually shield the condominiums from their view.

Gary said he anticipates that a complete review of the city’s records for the project will show that the 1978 city agreement was amended to allow the building to be constructed closer than 134 feet to the property line jog.

If not, Dade will immediately file for a routine variance, Gary said. “Since it’s already an approved plan, they would undoubtedly grant a variance,” he said.

Woodland Hills residents said they will fight such a variance request. But, they said, they are willing to compromise if Gary and Dade do not want to tear down the building--or tear out the portion of the three-story structure that is too close to the property line.