Battle of the ‘Stucco Mountains’ Heats Up : Housing Needs Outweigh Objections to Apartments, Planners Say
Tom Paterson and his neighbors want their corner of North Hollywood to keep a low profile--literally. But in a report released this month, city planners indicate that the desperate need for housing in Los Angeles looms larger than the homeowners’ desire to severely restrict the height of apartment buildings.
If approved, the report would have a major impact on the development of Paterson’s neighborhood of Valley Village, a quiet enclave in the southern portion of North Hollywood where four years ago residents began fighting to keep tall apartment houses, known locally as “stucco mountains,” from overshadowing their expensive houses.
Homeowners in Valley Village, like those in Van Nuys and elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley, have become concerned that the growing number of apartment houses is destroying the character of their neighborhood of single-family houses.
In the report, planners recommended raising the height limits suggested by Paterson and other members of a citizens advisory committee who met for nearly two years to draw up a special land-use plan for the area. The plan covers a one- by 1 1/2-mile area bounded by the Hollywood Freeway on the east, the Tujunga Wash next to Coldwater Canyon Avenue on the west, the Ventura Freeway on the south and Burbank Boulevard on the north.
‘A Cop-Out’
“They’re calling their plan a compromise between us and the developers, but we say it’s a cop-out,” said Paterson, who is president of the Valley Village Homeowners Assn. and a 21-year resident of the area. “They’re trying to drive the middle-class out of Los Angeles, while we’re trying to preserve the country atmosphere of our neighborhood.”
But Bob Sutton, the city planner in charge of neighborhood planning, pointed out that Valley Village, parts of which are tree-lined and lack sidewalks, is only 11 miles from downtown Los Angeles, making it “part of a major metropolitan area, not the country” like it might have been 30 years ago.”
“Unless you can lock the gates of California and say, ‘No more people,’ then you have to provide housing throughout the city, and densities have to be higher along major and secondary streets,” Sutton said.
Under the version of the land-use plan recommended by Sutton and his staff, apartment buildings on major streets, such as Riverside Drive, and separated from single-family homes by alleys, could be 45 feet tall, or up to five stories.
Apartments directly adjacent to homes would be restricted to 35 feet, or three stories with lofts. Multifamily residences on smaller streets could not be higher than 30 feet, or two stories.
Review Scheduled
In contrast, the citizens advisory group had suggested limiting all apartments and condominiums to two stories.
The Planning Commission is set to review the plan Thursday. If it is approved, the plan will be sent to the Planning and Land Use Management Committee for a public hearing. The City Council will have the final say over whether it is adopted.
In the meantime, building in the area is restricted by a temporary ordinance. The moratorium in the temporary ordinance, which was approved in November, 1986, expires later this year, but the City Council can extend it for one year, city planner Frank Quon said.
The ordinance restricts development in several ways, limiting all new buildings to two stories and holding the square footage of commercial developments to 1 1/2 times the size of the lot. Building apartments and condominiums on property zoned for commercial use is prohibited.
Expansion Blocked
Fred Russell, a retired movie technician who owns a small apartment house on Whitsett Avenue, said the temporary restrictions have prevented him from doubling the size of his six-unit building. A resident of the area for most of his life, Russell, 75, said he favors the less restrictive, permanent height limits set by planners.
“The homeowners on the citizen committee were zero-growth people,” Russell said. “They should have found out about the zoning before they moved here.”
Homes in Valley Village sell for as much as $735,000, with prices starting at $350,000, said Karen Hunt, a real estate agent in the area for 16 years. The area’s architectural mix of traditional, colonial, Tudor, Mediterranean and other styles of houses on large lots along tree-lined streets makes it an appealing alternative to tract housing and accounts for its popularity, she said.
But houses located next to large apartment houses are selling for as much as $50,000 less than others because of the resulting loss of privacy, said Hunt, who favors limiting apartment buildings to two stories.
Planners said their recommendations for the area strike a fair balance between the interests of homeowners and developers. They said the less restrictive height limits will be offset by requiring builders to provide more space between their projects and adjoining residential property, and by prohibiting open balconies and transparent windows above a height of 26 feet.
In addition, developers will not be allowed, as they have been in the past, to use loopholes in the laws to build higher than the 45-foot limit, Sutton said. “It will be an absolute limit,” he said.
Since the mid-1970s, the city has approved 16 special land-use plans, known as specific plans, in areas such as Century City and Westwood Village, said Gurdon Miller, a city planner in charge of reviewing specific plans. Another 20 or so specific plans have been proposed, including the one for Valley Village and for five other areas in the Valley, he said. Other areas in the Valley include business districts in Van Nuys and Reseda and along Ventura Boulevard.
The process of getting a plan approved usually takes at least 28 months, Miller said. The City Council must first direct planners to study an area. Then a citizens committee appointed by council members who represent the area works with city planners to draw up a proposed plan.
Although the process is designed to find out what citizens want, Miller said, “The job of the staff is to try to figure out as best as possible what would be a reasonable balance between all the interests.”
Two Years’ Work
In the case of Valley Village, members of the citizens advisory group met for nearly two years before they arrived at a compromise over height limits and other aspects of the plan, including requirements for landscaping and setbacks.
“Why set up a committee that meets every third Monday for years if the city is going to go ahead and undermine many of its decisions?” asked Larry Blumenstein, an area resident and apartment owner who headed the committee. “I think there’s something inherently wrong with a system that asks for input and then throws it out and does what it wants anyway.”
Spokeswomen for City Council members Joel Wachs, Zev Yaroslavsky and John Ferraro, who represent the area, said the revision of the committee’s recommendations were unfair.
“Our concern is that there be appropriate buffering between single- and multifamily housing,” said Vivian Rescalvo, a deputy to Yaroslavsky. “The 45-foot limit is quite high. It’s not acceptable.”
