Hollywood : Apartment Project Rejected

Residents of the Hollywood Hills area were neither fooled nor amused when a developer took a unique “time machine” approach to building a new apartment complex overlooking the Hollywood Freeway. Members of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission were likewise not taken in by Lincoln Properties’ bid to use a 24-year-old permit to build a 200-unit apartment project just off Mulholland Drive, but the panel appeared to take the unusual approach with more humor than the angry residents.

“I take my hat off to you. It certainly was creative,” Commissioner Theodore Stein Jr. told Doug Ring, attorney for the developer at last week’s Planning Commission hearing. The “creative” approach that drew outrage from citizens and snickers from commission members has a long and complicated history. The developer argued that a loophole in a use permit granted in 1965 for the 28-acre property would allow him to go forth with the expansive construction, even though the permit was to have expired after six months.

The property is currently zoned to allow the building of no more than three or four single-family homes, according to Planning Commission staff. Although it had given varying interpretations of the validity of the old permit in the last decade, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office ruled in May that the permit was no longer valid.

Unfazed, Lincoln representatives took their chances with a roomful of hostile residents before the commission.

After the unusual bid was denied, spokesmen for the developer said an appeal before the City Council is possible.