U.S. Complies With Call for Impact Studies on Arts Park : Environment: The Sierra Club sued to block the cultural center project last year. It is urging alternative sites outside the Sepulveda Basin.

The Sierra Club and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have taken a significant step toward settling their legal struggle over Arts Park L.A., a proposed cultural center that could be built in the Sepulveda Basin.

The Sierra Club filed suit in federal court last year seeking to block Arts Park, claiming that the project was proceeding without required environmental impact reports. According to the Corps of Engineers, those studies are under way.

The Corps owns the basin and has agreed in principle to let a private group--the Cultural Foundation--build Arts Park on a 60-acre plot there.

Environmentalists and community groups have argued that the basin is the Valley’s last substantial patch of greenery and a habitat for migrating Canada geese. They want Arts Park’s theater, museum and other structures built outside the basin, along Ventura Boulevard or in a similar urban setting.

The environmental impact reports requested by the Sierra Club are of particular importance to Arts Park opponents because they would identify and evaluate alternative sites for the complex.

“The key issue in the lawsuit is that we believe the Cultural Foundation must do an environmental impact report,” said Barry Fisher, the Sierra Club’s attorney.

“If they are actually going to do that, then they have acceded to our request,” Fisher said. “It’s a shame it took a lawsuit to accomplish that.”

Arts Park, as it is envisioned, could lure world-class symphony orchestras and ballet troupes to the Valley, say the car dealers, bankers and civic leaders who make up the Cultural Foundation and who have been working at their quest for nine years.

The complex would include a wing-shaped museum and clusters of colorful workshops set among rolling hills. At the center of the Arts Park would be a theater, partially subterranean but jutting above ground in a splay of grids, fins and elevated walkways.

These plans could change as a result of the government studies--a state environmental impact report and federal environmental impact statement--that analyze everything from the biological effects of construction to the resulting traffic increases in surrounding neighborhoods.

“As they go through the environmental process,” said Sheila Murphy, a Corps of Engineers project manager, “they might find that certain aspects of certain facilities will be unacceptable.”

In theory, the impact reports could require that particular structures, or all of the complex, be built elsewhere in the Valley.

Federal and state law allows some leeway as to when such reports for a project must be submitted, as long as they are submitted before approval for construction. The Sierra Club wanted the reports done years ago. The foundation said it could not begin an environmental impact report (EIR) until completion of its recent design competition, which produced architectural models of each of Arts Park’s structures.

“You can’t do an EIR until you know what you’re going to put on it,” said Linda Kinnee, the foundation’s executive director. “It was frustrating for us because they didn’t have to sue anybody to get this report done.”

The final reports should be issued within two years and the U.S. attorney’s office, which is representing the Corps of Engineers, is confident the Sierra Club suit will be settled soon.

However, another legal issue may prolong the case. It involves the manner in which environmental documents are prepared.

The Corps of Engineers is responsible for studying the impact of any construction on its land. But by common practice it asks the developer to handle the research for its report.

Thus, in this case, the Cultural Foundation has hired an Orange County firm that specializes in preparing environmental reports and statements. This firm, the Chambers Group, will study Arts Park’s environmental impact and present its findings to the Corps of Engineers, which uses the information to fashion a final draft of the impact report.

This partnership between government and developer is considered standard practice. Fisher and the Sierra Club say they consider it a conflict of interest.

“The federal agency has an obligation to do an independent analysis,” Fisher said. “One has to question how balanced and deep the analysis will be when it is the very proponent of a particular site and a particular design that has been delegated the responsibility of doing that analysis.”

A spokesman for the Chambers Group argued that impact statements have to be balanced because much of the report process is open to the public. Hearings are called to allow the community to voice concerns and suggestions. First drafts of the documents are later presented for public comment and revision.

“The bottom line is that this report is so intensively reviewed by the government and by the people that we have to be sure it’s an impartial analysis,” said John Westermeier, a vice president of the Chambers Group.

The first public hearing could be held as early as January, Westermeier said. Others would follow in the summer.

It remains to be seen if the Sierra Club, having won its request for evaluation of alternative sites, will drop its case against Arts Park or will use the suit to challenge the government-developer relationship in the impact report process. And, should the complex eventually be approved for construction in the basin, the Sierra Club might seek other avenues to fight it.

The next hearing in the case will be held in U.S. District Court on Jan. 8.