Building in Hilly Area Pushes Neighborhood to the Brink

The huge new homes come with $800,000 price tags and million-dollar views.

But some Studio City residents complain that a flurry of construction is turning their hillside neighborhood into a place where sewage can run down rutted roads--and where a creek flows down the middle of a street.

Angry homeowners are demanding that Los Angeles officials halt further development on a ridge half a mile south of Ventura Boulevard until proper streets and sewers are installed.

And they want the city to make developers pay for the improvements along narrow Avenida del Sol and Alta Mesa Drive.

“We’re wondering if our hill can hold another cesspool,” said Barry Cahill, who lives about 30 feet below two large houses under construction.

Cahill’s residence of 21 years is so close to the development that nails sometimes drop from the construction site onto his driveway. “We’ve had seven flat tires since they started building,” he said. Cahill lives on Avenida del Sol, which, like Alta Mesa Drive, twists like spaghetti around the ridge east of Coldwater Canyon Avenue. In some places, the roadways are only 11 feet wide.

The roads were carved out of the sandstone slopes in the 1930s when a 150-lot subdivision was created by speculators. City officials consider the streets substandard, which means that they receive a low priority for repairs.

Longtime residents say it took months for crews to get around to repairing a 1978 landslide that washed away a section of Alta Mesa and undermined a telephone pole. They recall that the pole hung by its wires over the washout for three months.

Over the years, 106 of the best lots in the subdivision have been built upon. As undeveloped land has become scarce in the San Fernando Valley, the tiniest and steepest lots have begun being snapped up by builders.

Sixteen new homes were started last year on the ridge, according to homeowner Chip Worsinger. These days, construction workers’ trucks and piles of lumber line parts of both streets, causing traffic to squeeze past.

“A fire truck couldn’t get through some of these places where they double-park,” said Worsinger, an 18-year resident.

“If the city isn’t going to take care of this hill, then it shouldn’t allow new building. With cesspools up here, when it rains and the ground gets saturated, the runoff water runs into the street. The cesspools weaken the hillsides.”

Worsinger said development already has made its mark on the hillside. Construction of homes along Alta Mesa has forced a year-round stream to run down the middle of the street.

Nearby, a developer who ran out of money about seven years ago abandoned a pair of partially built houses. The homes’ massive concrete-block foundations remain because officials were afraid that part of the hill would collapse if they were dug up. “They’re our Stonehenge,” Worsinger said.

Moratorium Sought

Earlier this week, a delegation of the hill’s residents asked City Councilman Mike Woo to consider a moratorium on further construction until such problems can be resolved. Diana Brueggemann, Woo’s field aide for the Valley, said she hopes to meet next week with residents.

“We’ll determine what the issues are and take appropriate action,” she said. “It’s an isolated pocket, a place you’d never notice.”

But extension of city sewer lines onto the ridge and construction of new, wider roadways could be expensive for residents under present city policies, officials said.

City sewer engineer Dan Comorre said it could cost as much as $8,000 per family to bring sewers to the neighborhood. “The assessment would be spread among property owners that benefit from them,” he said.

New roads would cost residents too--provided there’s enough room to build widened streets on the ridge, said Jim Glasacow, a city engineer in charge of street design for the Valley.

Studies Needed

“It’s a real difficult situation in those hills,” Glasacow said. He said he could not estimate the cost to property owners until engineering studies determine how many retaining walls and bulkheads would be needed for the area.

Heavy assessments are out of the question for some residents of the ridge, however, said Carol Henderson, who purchased a 38-year-old one-bedroom house on Avenida del Sol about two years ago. She said she could barely afford her tiny, 1,000-square-foot home.

But builder Kevin Galik said he anticipates having no trouble finding buyers for the 4,000-square-foot estates he is constructing on Avenida del Sol. One of his steep, pie-shaped lots is only 38 feet wide at the street.

“It’s legal,” Galik said of the pie-shaped house, which will fetch about $800,000. “Is it too big for the lot? It’s pretty big, I’d say. Maybe. But it’s legal.”

Parking Spaces

Galik said he would support new city restrictions such as one being considered by officials that would require up to four parking spaces for large hillside homes such as his. The law allows him to build the homes with only two-car garages that open directly onto the street without a driveway.

But he defends the large new homes being built in the hills of Studio City.

Modern 50-foot-deep cesspools don’t leak, he said. And modern hillside homes don’t fall down the hill, he said, no matter how imposing they look from below.

“When a builder leaves a hillside, it’s better than it was before,” he said.