Rancho P.V. Council to Be Involved Early in Proposed Building Projects

In an unusual move aimed at avoiding major disputes between builders and the city, Rancho Palos Verdes has embarked on an experiment that calls for council members to get involved early in the planning of major developments.

The experiment marks a major departure in protocol for the council and comes at a time when development issues dominate local political debate. A handful of major proposals, including a controversial plan for a luxury hotel and homes at the former Marineland site, are now before the city.

Typically, council members approve the overall street, lot and other design features of a project, but do not get involved further unless the developer or someone else files an appeal seeking to overturn a Planning Commission decision.

Under the three-month experiment, however, the council will hold public workshops twice a month with the city’s planning commissioners, developers and interested residents. The workshops are designed to give city officials a chance to study a particular project and voice any concerns they might have while it is still in the early conceptual stages.

To avoid potential legal problems, the city will not require a developer to participate in a workshop. And neither the developer nor city officials are bound by any suggestions that might emerge from a workshop on how a particular project should be shaped.

“As I perceive it, the fundamental purpose is to give the City Council and Planning Commission an opportunity to give input into a project before (the developer) comes in with formalized plans and hundreds of hours of detail work,” Mayor Mel Hughes said.

“When you get to that point, there is so much inertia in a project, they only grudgingly move from one position to another.”

City Atty. Ariel Calonne said he is unaware of any other city where council members have initiated such workshops. However, he said they are similar in concept to meetings held by city officials before environmental impact reports and general plans are prepared.

The city has scheduled two workshops a month for the next three months. Council members will then decide if more workshops should be held, or if the idea should be scuttled.

On Monday night, about 40 people showed up for the first workshop, which was held to discuss a proposal by Los Angeles-based Kajima Development Corp. to build 76 homes on 59 acres overlooking McCarroll Canyon.

The site just south of Crest Road and west of Highridge Road had originally been zoned for more than 120 housing units by Los Angeles County before Rancho Palos Verdes was incorporated in the early ‘70s and the zoning was changed to decrease the allowable density.

During the workshop, several residents said they were fearful that the project could contribute to erosion and flooding problems in the canyon, while others said they were concerned that the homes would be grouped too closely together.

Afterward, several city officials said they thought the workshop had been beneficial. Eileen Suto, who is overseeing the project for Kajima, expressed optimism that her company’s plan would face smoother sailing because of the workshop.

City officials say they hope the workshops will help to avoid the sometimes colossal misunderstandings that have erupted between the city and developers. Some developers have spent months or years guiding projects through the city’s planning processes before discovering that council members were opposed to major aspects of the projects.

For example, Councilwoman Jacki Bacharach pointed to a developer’s plan, first filed with the city in 1987, to build homes on 64 acres across from Marineland.

After spending months designing the project, the developer received approval from the Planning Commission but was rebuffed by council members, who ultimately called for the project to be scaled down and redesigned. It took the developer more than two years to receive final approval.

“It got to the council, and the council wanted just the reverse that the Planning Commission wanted,” Bacharach said.

Luella Wike, who chairs the Planning Commission, said she believes the workshops could prove helpful for commissioners because it will give them a better idea how council members feel about a particular project. The workshops could also assist developers, she said.

“I think it is much fairer to the developer if he finds out right off the bat his project won’t fly,” Wike said.

Wike and other city officials said commissioners and council members will have to tread carefully during the workshops and not discuss a project in such detail that they could be accused by a developer of prejudging it even before public hearings on it have been held.

Also, it is important that residents affected by a particular project not be excluded from the workshops, they said.

“I think the primary concern is protecting the due process rights of both the project applicants and members of the public,” Calonne said.

Calonne said guidelines established for the workshops provide that, if residents living within 500 feet of a proposed project would normally have been notified of the project by the city, they will also be told if a workshop has been scheduled.

To protect the developer’s rights, Calonne said the city decided to make participation in the workshops voluntary.

Also, a developer is not required to comply with any suggestions made by city officials during the workshop and can withdraw the application for a project and get a refund on any fees paid if he or she objects to what transpires during the workshop, Calonne said.