Controversy Casts Shadow on High-Rise : Westwood: Fight by residents against condominium project highlights bigger battle by community review boards against Planning Department.

Westwood homeowner groups are opposing a proposed Wilshire Boulevard high-rise they say will cast too long a shadow on nearby homes, a case that highlights a festering concern about the role of community design review boards in the planning process.

The design for the 22-story condominium project, slated for the north side of Wilshire between Selby and Manning avenues, was recommended twice for rejection by the Westwood Design Review Board because it was deemed incompatible with its surroundings and aesthetically unpleasing.

The project also would place six single-family homes in shade for longer than is acceptable under city regulations. In that particular area, zoning regulations prohibit new buildings from casting more than two hours of shadow on neighboring homes.

Part of the squabble is over whether the condo project, which is in a high-rise corridor, is subject to the shade and shadow review of the design board since it was grandfathered in under old zoning regulations in effect before design review boards were created. According to the ordinance that created design review boards, if a proposed building casts more than two hours of shade on surrounding residences, the board can recommend against it.

The condo project substantially has already been approved by the city as to height, density and other criteria.

The larger dispute here, however, involves the relationship between the citizen advisory board and the Planning Department.

The legislation for citizen design review boards, written by City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, was enacted in 1988. The ordinance gave the groups advisory approval over building design, landscaping and whether a proposed structure fits into a community. The boards, an outgrowth of grass-roots concern about controlling new development, have been sought by homeowner groups and others who want a say in how their neighborhoods look. The City Council member for each community appoints that area’s advisory panel. The panel’s recommendations go to the planning director.

Exercising his prerogative, city Planning Director Kenneth Topping ignored the advice of the Westwood Design Review Board and approved the condominium project proposed by developer Paul Amir. Two homeowner groups, Friends of Westwood and Westwood-Holmby Property Owners Assn., Monday appealed Topping’s decision to the Los Angeles Planning Commission.

If the matter is ultimately appealed to the City Council, as expected, it is likely to be a tug of war between developers and Planning Department officials on one side and increasingly powerful homeowner organizations on the other.

The sentiment of council members, many of whose constituents want design review boards of their own, may foretell how far they are willing to go toward appeasing the slow-growth movement. Yaroslavsky noted that some of the same council members voted to exempt several Wilshire Boulevard high-rises from new, more stringent zoning laws over his objections.

Yaroslavsky said he will back the Design Review Board’s opposition to the building’s design as too commercial, thus incompatible with other buildings in the Wilshire Corridor.

The Planning Commission is now conducting its own study of design review boards, that are proliferating to the dismay of some officials.

“I think there are some people on the Planning Commission who want to limit the scope of design review boards,” Yaroslavsky said. “There is some concern they have become mini-Planning Commissions, and they’re not.”

According to Robert Sutton, the head of neighborhood planning for the Planning Department, “The existing procedure is not working. People are using it as a camouflage to slow down development. Design review boards have used their power in a blackmail role. They hold the case hostage.”

Some members of the Westwood Design Review Board, appointed in mid-1988, aren’t thrilled with the way the process is working either.

Board President Richard Agay voiced his displeasure over what he believes is Planning Department tampering with Design Review Board recommendations. Agay claimed that Topping, or one of his senior deputies acting in his stead, overrules the board only on large projects where the developers have political clout.

“We really are at this point the Westwood mini-project design review board,” Agay said.

An ad hoc committee of the Planning Commission was ostensibly formed to study the design review board process and adopt uniform guidelines to avoid abuses, but Agay claims there is a hidden agenda. “The real purpose is to emasculate design review boards,” he charged.

Westwood Design Review Board member Carole Magnuson shares Agay’s displeasure with the planning director’s decision on the Amir project. “If the board is repeatedly overturned on major projects, I won’t continue to function on it.”

Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood, said, “if design review is turning out to be a joke, they might as well gut it.”

Yaroslavsky said he doesn’t look at the issue the same way. “A design review board does not fail because five people don’t get what they want 100 percent of the time,” he said.

Magnuson said the 5-2 negative recommendation on the Amir Development Corp. condominiums was clear-cut, with the planning director simply contradicting the board’s judgment on whether the project will enhance the area. She--and others--describe the building as sleek, ultra modern and commercial looking, not residential. Magnuson said she can envision it in Miami or San Francisco, but not Los Angeles.

The building will have shades of red, blue and green on the outside. “It’s a 22-story stucco building,” she said.

Maria Hummer, an attorney for Amir, disagreed. “I think the building’s beautiful.” She noted that the two architects on the design review board voted for the project.

Hummer and Sutton both said the project is exempt from the shade and shadow restrictions because it was already under development when the rules changed, so it was grandfathered in.

Homeowner activist Lake claims the zoning exemption for the project doesn’t remove it from design review. “They make up stories that are interesting but not legal.”

Not every area of Los Angeles has a design review board, but many of them are being sought as sections of the city adopt interim control ordinances to manage development.

On the Westside, Pacific Palisades and the San Vicente Boulevard corridor in Brentwood have boards. A design review board for Granada Hills has been approved by the Planning Commission, while a North Hollywood area called Valley Village was denied a review board by the Planning Commission because its architecture isn’t distinctive enough to warrant one, Sutton said.

He said the Planning Department objects to delays caused by “milking this thing to death,” which, he said, winds up costing the developer money that he passes along in increased prices to renters and buyers.

“We can get to the same point in a more reasonable time period,” Sutton said. “Once you have your say, isn’t that it?”

Not exactly, according to homeowner groups and some design review board members. They object because the developer gets the last word in private meetings with planning officials to which they are not privy.

“I’m as deeply disturbed by the process as by the results,” Lake said.

The private meeting is one basis of the homeowners’ appeal of the condo project. Sutton and an attorney for the developer defend the meetings as proper, particularly because, they say, their content is later revealed to the public.

Agay, however, said the post design review meetings between developers and the Planning Department are a “major defect in the ordinance.” While the views of opponents are filtered down to the director by his staff, the developer is present, with an attorney, to give his side face to face.

Sutton said homeowners have no right to be notified or to attend the meetings, which he characterized as working sessions not subject to the state’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, because they don’t involve a public board or commission.