Area Plan Revision Inches Slowly Ahead : Wilmington, Harbor City Waiting 6 Years

More than six years ago, at the bidding of harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, the Los Angeles City Council ordered a major revision of the community plan for Wilmington and Harbor City.

It’s still not ready.

And this week city officials acknowledged that it could take another year before the revisions are approved by the City Council, making it one of the most protracted plan revisions ever.

The antiquated plan, one of 35 throughout the city, serves as a blueprint for what can and cannot be built in the two harbor-area communities. It was written in the late 1960s when now-standard environmental reviews of such plans were not required, leaving developers free to build factories next to single-family homes.

The revised plan, when it is done, will bring with it new rules for building that should better protect residential neighborhoods.

Officials offer any number of explanations for the delays, ranging from snags involving the neighboring Port of Los Angeles to complications stemming from the area’s unusual patchwork of industrial and residential development.

Several sources, however, said most of the problems can be traced to a trite yet fundamental City Hall adage: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. For most of the six years, they said, Wilmington/Harbor City was not regarded as a priority within the Planning Department, in part because of political pressures from other areas of the city and because of Flores’ own reluctance to lean on the department.

Revisions of community plans in both Westwood and Hollywood were authorized by the City Council after Flores won approval for the Wilmington/Harbor City revision, but work on those plans is already finished. The City Council approved the new Westwood plan in January, 1988, and the Hollywood plan in December.

Last year, when Flores finally got fed up with the delays on the Wilmington/Harbor City plan, the department doubled its staff assigned to the plan and set such an ambitious schedule for itself that the plan was incomplete when presented to the city’s Planning Commission for review in April. Next Thursday, the commission is scheduled to give the revisions a second look.

Responds to Noisy Wheels

“Ken Topping, the director of planning, has admitted publicly to the City Council that he responds to noisy wheels,” Flores said in an interview this week. “I try to work with the departments. . . . In this case, that may have been an unfortunate choice on my part.”

As an indication that the Planning Department will need more time, the City Council voted Tuesday to extend for up to one year a 3-year-old construction ban on large apartment buildings in the two communities. The temporary ban was first imposed in early 1986 to put a lid on construction while the city finished the revised plan. It was intended to last one year.

Once the plan revisions (and accompanying zoning changes needed to put the new plan in effect) clear the Planning Commission, they must be reviewed by the council’s Planning and Environment Committee and then by the full City Council. If the committee makes major changes, they must be sent back to the commission for scrutiny before being forwarded to the council.

‘Summer of Next Year’

“The very soonest I see it all coming together is roughly the end of this year,” said Don Taylor, a city planner assigned to the plan revision. “But it is more likely it will run through the summer of next year.”

Said Flores of the delays: “If I had to do it over again, the first thing I would do is map out a timetable . . . and make them stick to it. I never want this to happen again.”

By all accounts, the Wilmington/Harbor City plan has been a difficult one. An increasing awareness among Wilmington residents about problems in the community has prompted unprecedented demands for reform. Residents have called for commercial and recreational access to the heavily industrial waterfront, revitalization of downtown Wilmington, a scaling back of industrial uses in residential areas and an end to large apartment construction.

Meanwhile, the Port of Los Angeles, eager to capitalize on booming Pacific Rim trade, has been reluctant to loosen its grip on the community by setting aside waterfront berths for uses not related to the port or eliminating unsightly storage yards for shipping containers.

“I think Wilmington and parts of Harbor City are unusual because of the magnitude of incompatible land uses and the need to come up with solutions to deal with that,” said city planner Larry Friedman, who worked on the plan revisions for more than three years. “In Westwood, they were looking at things like limiting floor area of projects. In Wilmington, we were looking at significant changes of uses as well.”

The Biggest Obstacle

But even with the difficulties, Friedman and others said the biggest obstacle has been one of manpower. Friedman said he was the only planner assigned to the revisions during most of his tenure--and even then he had other responsibilities. Several City Hall sources said allocation of staff is the clearest indication of Planning Department priorities. Currently, there are four staff members assigned to the plan revision.

“There was a lot of pressure--and screaming people--to move forward with Hollywood and Westwood,” one city official said. “And there was a lot of development pressure. In terms of Wilmington, there is not a lot of development there. It didn’t have the same urgency.”

The staff shortage was worsened by the department’s decision not to hire outside consultants to assist with the work until last July. Consultants were hired early in the process in both the Westwood and Hollywood plan revisions.

City Planning Officer Glenn Blossom, who until recently oversaw community plan revisions, said the department waited so long to hire outside help because it was trying to save money.

Blossom said the department wanted to hire the same consultant to do environmental reviews for both the Wilmington/Harbor City plan and a separate transportation plan now under way for the Port of Los Angeles. “Hassles with the port over the details” of the transportation plan led to unexpected delays, he said.

‘Cheaper to Consolidate’

“Since we were paying for a consultant for the port area, we thought it would be cheaper for the city to consolidate it,” Blossom said. “While it was cheaper, we paid the price in a lengthy downtime.”

Peter Mendoza, president of Wilmington’s largest homeowners group and a member of the now-defunct citizens advisory panel on the plan revisions, said the city’s handling of the plan is indicative of general attitudes at City Hall toward Wilmington.

“We don’t have a big commercial center going up or a bunch of affluent lawyers or doctors well positioned in the community to put on pressure,” Mendoza said. “What we do have are a lot of interested and concerned residents.”

Despite all the frustration, Flores said there has been an unexpected bonus from the delays.

“As it dragged on, more and more people became aware of it, so there was more input,” Flores said. “I don’t suggest that as a way of getting more community input. I would rather have had the plan done earlier. But in the long run, people won’t be able to say they haven’t had an opportunity to be heard.”