Panel Voids Ouster of AA Group : Zoning: Neighbors of the Studio City meeting hall, given to the North Hollywood chapter in 1947, plan to appeal the decision, which limits meeting attendance to 100 people.

The Los Angeles Board of Zoning Appeals agreed Saturday to allow a popular Alcoholics Anonymous chapter to remain at its Studio City meeting hall, overturning an earlier city decision and setting the stage for an appeal to the City Council by neighbors who say the AA meetings cause problems with parking, litter and noise.

The zoning board voted unanimously to allow the North Hollywood chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous to continue meeting at the group’s facility on Radford Avenue. But it imposed conditions that included limiting meetings to 100 people.

“This organization needs to be in this neighborhood,” said James D. Leewong, zoning board chairman. “But we need to control it and limit it.”

Alcoholics Anonymous members meet regularly to socialize, talk over problems and teach newer members the AA method of alcoholism recovery, members said at the hearing. Total abstention from drugs and alcohol is the goal of AA members, they said.

Renee A. Gunter, president of the Grove Assn., the homeowners group that complained about the AA group, said her organization will appeal the zoning board’s decision to the City Council. During the 4 1/2-hour hearing, Gunter and other neighbors told the board that the presence of the AA group held back property values in the upscale area.

“We find ourselves up against the wall and can find no other recourse than to have them find another, larger facility,” Gunter said at the hearing.

Gunter showed board members several soda cans and beer bottles that she said were left by AA members going to and from the Radford Avenue meeting hall.

AA members who testified at the hearing said they will continue to urge members to leave meetings quietly and not to litter or park illegally.

Gail Gordon, an attorney representing the North Hollywood AA group, said the group’s seven-member advisory board must vote on whether to accept the zoning board’s conditions.

“They are grateful that they can remain on the property,” Gordon said.

Members of the AA group said they are disappointed, however, that a limit of 100 people was imposed. Attendance at the 90-minute meetings, scheduled twice daily during the week and at noon on Saturdays, usually is between 25 and 90 people.

But more than 100 attend a popular Monday night meeting, AA members said. But they said those inconvenienced by the Monday night limit will be asked to put the welfare of the meeting hall ahead of their own interests.

“Our common welfare comes first,” said AA member Don M., who, consistent with the organization’s traditions, does not reveal his last name. “We have an opportunity to show that we can make it work.”

The zoning board decided to hold another public hearing a year after a decision is reached in the current dispute to determine whether neighborhood complaints remain.

“No one is going to let AA off the hook,” said board member Joseph D. Mandel. But he said forcing the group to move because of neighbors’ complaints was like “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

In June a city zoning administrator gave the North Hollywood group one year to move from its property because it does not meet the area’s residential zoning and parking requirements. The meetings are held in a former church, which was donated to the organization in 1947 and does not have a parking lot.

For years the city had allowed the meeting hall to remain because its use by the AA group predates city zoning laws, officials said.

But the issue drew the attention of city officials last winter after neighbors complained that as many as 250 people attended evening meetings at the Radford Avenue meeting hall. Cars occupied most of the neighborhood’s available street parking, and AA members tossed litter on lawns and sidewalks and were noisy on the way to and from the meetings, the neighbors said.

Representatives of the North Hollywood AA group and Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs said Saturday that they are trying to arrange for the organization to use a nearby lot owned by CBS.