Planners Ask Review of Redevelopment Study : Property Owners, Businesses Challenge Bernson Proposal for Northridge Site

The Los Angeles Planning Commission asked the city attorney’s office Thursday to review a proposed study of whether 40 acres in Northridge should become a redevelopment zone, citing “serious legal questions” raised by opponents of the proposal by City Councilman Hal Bernson.

Bernson earlier this year steered through the council a motion to have the Community Redevelopment Agency study whether the industrial area north of Parthenia Street and east of Vanalden Avenue meets the definition of blight under state redevelopment law. Bernson is advocating redevelopment of the area as a business park.

But a group called the Parthenia Property Owners and Tenants Assn. has bitterly opposed the plan, saying their land is not blighted and accusing Bernson of trying to force them to sell it. The group’s leader has launched a campaign to recall Bernson.

Thursday afternoon, about 20 members of the group picketed a Northridge wholesale store next to the study area. Bernson has identified Price Co., the store’s operator, as a potential developer of the business park. Price Co. has agreed to pay $268,000 of the study’s $468,000 cost.

Planning Commission approval of the study’s boundaries would be the first step in making the area from Parthenia Street to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks and from Vanalden to Wilbur avenues a redevelopment zone.

But the commission moved cautiously after the Parthenia owners and tenants group raised a number of legal objections to the proposed study.

About half the area is publicly owned storage space, which the opponents’ attorney, Christopher A. Sutton, said under state law cannot be included in redevelopment zones.

He added that Bernson’s motion initiating the study put the matter directly in the hands of the CRA, when it should have offered the council the choice of assigning the preliminary boundary study to either the CRA or the Planning Commission.

“There seems to be a basic flaw in the boundary designation,” Planning Commission President William G. Luddy said. “I want this thing reviewed by the city attorney. . . . There are serious legal questions raised.”

CRA officials said afterward that the legal review and postponement of the matter to Oct. 5 amounted to only a minor delay. John Spalding, CRA’s director of planning and urban design, said Sutton’s legal arguments are “dead wrong.” All 18 redevelopment zones in the city have some public land in them, he said.

But Walter N. Prince, president of the owners and tenants group, said he was heartened by the delay. He said he believes that the commission will eventually reject the plan.

Bernson asked the CRA in 1987 to study whether a 160-acre area around the present study area might be appropriate for redevelopment. The CRA said no.

The difference between 1987 and today, Spalding said, is that the present study area is a smaller piece of land that has “a concentration of uses that we suspect are a blighting influence.’ He declined to specify what uses he was referring to, but said they would be identified in the CRA study.

The study could also find that redevelopment is economically infeasible for the area, Spalding added.

Under redevelopment, the CRA sells bonds and uses the money for loans to upgrade blighted areas. The CRA pays off the bonds with the additional tax revenue generated as the land’s value increases. The CRA has condemnation powers that it can use against owners who refuse to participate in the plan.