ANALYSIS : Bradley Adopting New Stance on Growth : Development: The mayor, heretofore strongly pro-development, voices opposition to two huge projects.

For years a champion of powerful real estate developers, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley twice in the last month has spoken out against big developments, inviting the question of how much he is willing to break with the past as he struggles to regain the public’s good will.

Last week Bradley urged the city attorney to join a homeowners’ lawsuit opposing a planned 875,000-square-foot commercial project at the Santa Monica Airport. Last month, he moved to scale down the huge Porter Ranch project proposed for the West San Fernando Valley by Nathan Shapell, a developer who has contributed more than $40,000 to Bradley over the last five years.

With the City Council frequently acquiescing in developers’ plans, the development issue gives Bradley a chance to seize the political initiative at a time when he badly needs to reassert his leadership--after a year in which the mayor spent much of his time answering charges of unethical behavior.

Bradley’s aides say the mayor’s recent positions--each delivered with no small amount of public relations fanfare--should be seen as a signal that the mayor is prepared to take a more aggressive stand against some development.

“If it means intervening in the case of an individual project, the mayor is capable of doing it and willing to do it,” said Mark Fabiani, Bradley’s new chief of staff. “When he stands up with a homeowners’ group or publicizes a lawsuit he supports, he can have a unique impact on public policy.”

So far, however, the mayor’s actions have aroused more skepticism than optimism among veterans of the neighborhood battles over growth--confrontations that often have seen Bradley using his influence on behalf of developers.

“The mayor is taking a lot of heat for his various improprieties. So, he’s jumping in on the side of the citizens, saying, ‘Look at what a good guy I am!’ But he’s not coming to grips with the problems,” said Gordon Murley, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., the largest organization of homeowner groups in the city.

Other critics of the mayor point out that, although he opposed development in Santa Monica, he remained silent about a major project in his own back yard, a massive office complex just west of the Harbor Freeway that the City Council approved in December over strenuous objections of the city planning staff.

The critics also point out that despite his reservations about Porter Ranch, Bradley never objected to the size of the mammoth project.

A true indication of the mayor’s resolve, they say, will be whether Bradley chooses to contest controversial projects in the city’s Fairfax District and on the western edge of the expanding downtown.

There, proposed developments pose a formidable challenge to streets, sewers and air quality that are already severely overtaxed. Moreover, they are sectors of the city represented by influential council members, who could make life miserable for Bradley by harping on questions of financial propriety that the mayor is trying to put behind him.

“The mayor doesn’t have the luxury to antagonize the people who have been more than fair to him during the past year,” said one member of the council, who asked not to be identified.

Although many slow-growth activists dismiss the mayor’s recent conduct as political posturing, he is managing to kindle some expectations.

“We were real pleased that the mayor came out in opposition to Porter Ranch. Likewise in Santa Monica,” said Diana Plotkin, a leader of a neighborhood campaign against two proposed commercial centers near Farmers Market in the Fairfax District. “We want to believe that Bradley will be ready to get just as tough closer to home.”

Plotkin’s neighborhood has been a hotbed of homeowner activism for several years, and the expected showdown over the Farmers Market development could turn out to be one of the most bitter anti-growth struggles in years. The developers envision 3 million to 4 million square feet of offices, stores and residences in the heart of one of the city’s densest and most-traveled neighborhoods. The opponents have retained a staff of consultants, including a lawyer, a geologist and a traffic consultant, and are girding for a lengthy legal battle.

“If we have to file a lawsuit against the city, we will do it,” Plotkin said.

Intervention by Bradley could pit him against Council President John Ferraro, who represents the Fairfax District. Ferraro is an old political opponent of Bradley who has emerged over the years as one of the city’s most durable politicians.

“Can we expect to see the mayor take on a regional commercial center in John Ferraro’s back yard?” asked one member of the council. “Don’t bet on it.”

Jane Blumenfeld, Bradley’s deputy in charge of city planning policy, said the mayor will be taking a hard look at the proposals affecting the Farmers Market neighborhood, as well as additional developments proposed near Los Angeles International Airport and for downtown west of the Harbor Freeway.

Blumenfeld’s presence in the mayor’s office, more than any other single factor, explains the optimism that some slow-growth advocates are feeling these days about Bradley’s policies toward development.

During the 18 months she has been in office, Blumenfeld has been the chief architect of a series of initiatives aimed at achieving air quality improvement, reduced traffic congestion and better design of new commercial buildings.

Moreover, Blumenfeld was the author of Bradley’s 10-point critique of the Porter Ranch project, which argued that its spread-out design and separation of homes, stores and offices would lead to excessive dependence on the automobile.

Critics of the mayor’s intervention with Porter Ranch say the agreement he ultimately reached with Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area where the ranch is planned, failed to address the greatest risk posed by the development--the threat of flooding caused by overbuilding in hilly terrain.

“The mayor got into it too late and never consulted with the people who were most concerned,” said Murley of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns.

“All Bradley did was make an enemy of Bernson, and then realizing the foolishness of that, tried to patch it over with a compromise that no one liked,” said a confidential City Hall source close to the negotiations between Bernson and Bradley.

Blumenfeld and Fabiani conceded that the mayor’s office became involved “too late in the process” at Porter Ranch, but they defended the outcome of the mayor’s intervention. As a result of the Bradley-Bernson compromise, 18% of the nearly 4,000 housing units to be built will be set aside for poor people and traffic will be limited through a 25% reduction in parking available at a planned office complex.

In the future, Fabiani said, the mayor will get involved earlier in projects and try to persuade a majority of the council to back him.