Permits to Build 400 Housing Units Freed : Growth: The Glendale City Council bows to a court order and lifts its moratorium but simultaneously extends a ban on other construction in an effort to check population.

Acting on a court order, the Glendale City Council has released building permits for construction of more than 400 new apartment and condominium units that had been stalled by a yearlong moratorium.

At the same time, the council Tuesday extended for a year a ban on almost all other new multiple-family construction and adopted a stringent new design ordinance that members hailed as a partial answer to curtailing the rampant growth of the last few years.

The building permits were released to comply with a Sept. 28 ruling by the state Court of Appeal that invalidated the old moratorium, which had been adopted unexpectedly and without waiting the required five days for public response. A coalition of developers successfully challenged the city’s action.

Council members met Tuesday in a 20-minute closed session, reportedly to decide if they would appeal the ruling, before returning to the council chambers to adopt a measure complying with the order. City attorneys had warned that the city stood little chance of winning an appeal.

“The reason for this ordinance is that the court said we had to do this,” Mayor Jerold Milner said. “It is not our choosing.”

Councilman Carl Raggio said: “No one is in favor of what we’re doing,” even though the council voted unanimously for the measure.

The council unexpectedly imposed the original moratorium Sept. 27, 1988, after hearing widespread complaints that developers were building units far larger than they had in the past. Milner said the building trend could mean that the present population of 165,000 would soar to 350,000 within 20 years, far more than the population of 220,000 projected in the city’s general plan.

Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg called the court action a pity and blamed overdevelopment on the greed of builders. “It’s a sad day that we are regulated by elements that care nothing for the city at all, or its residents,” she said.

Haik Vartanian of the developers coalition, the Moratorium Litigation Committee, in a private interview countered: “It’s a sad day that it had to take a court order for them to realize what they had done wrong. We were following the law. They were the ones who did not follow their City Charter.”

Vartanian said developers are considering suing the city for financial losses during the moratorium.

Unlike the invalidated first moratorium, which became effective immediately, the new moratorium will not start until Nov. 9. It provides for some construction under interim regulations, such as two-story projects submitted to the city before Dec. 1, 1988.

Meantime, the council ordered that all other building permits for multiple-dwelling residential zones be withheld for 30 days until the new moratorium is imposed.

The complicated series of actions is designed to give city planners time to develop new rules to curtail population growth and housing density in the city--a process they say could take up to a year.

The design ordinance adopted Tuesday will do part of the job by setting new standards for more landscaping and open space around buildings, increased parking, lower building height profiles and other aesthetic factors.

Milner said the city is working toward a formula “to manage the future growth of Glendale.” He said many factions of the community have worked for more than five years to develop the formula.

“We all have to give a little bit for the betterment of the community as a whole.”