Santa Monica Airport Plan in Jeopardy : Development: Fierce opposition forces supporters of a large-scale office project to consider a scaled-down version. But it’s unclear whether the developer will still want to proceed with a lesser plan.

With proposed commercial development at Santa Monica Municipal Airport under attack from almost every conceivable direction, city officials are now scrambling to see if the project can be salvaged at all.

At the very least, the project seems certain to be scaled back considerably from what the Santa Monica City Council approved on Oct. 10--an 822,000-square-foot development composed of six office buildings of six stories each and four parking structures in the airport’s eastern corner.

“I would envision a significantly decreased project,” Mayor Dennis Zane, one of the project’s staunchest supporters, acknowledged at a City Council meeting Tuesday night. Opposition to the project grew dramatically after the council approved it by a 4-3 vote in October. In less than a month, a Santa Monica citizens committee collected nearly 8,000 signatures in a referendum drive. As a result, the council now must either rescind its approval or set the matter to a public vote.

On Oct. 27, a pilots groups and a homeowner filed suit contending that the city had no authority to allow such a development without voter approval, because bond financing had been used to purchase the airport land for parkland.

Meanwhile, across the city line in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, residents have filed suit challenging the environmental impact report on the project. Los Angeles Councilman Marvin Braude and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter already have publicly opposed the development, and last week Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley joined the opposition as well. On Tuesday, the Santa Monica City Council delayed for the second time taking any action on the referendum drive to give Mayor Zane additional time to come up with a new proposal to keep the project alive.

Santa Monica officials now say the project probably will be reduced to somewhere in the range of 500,000 to 650,000 square feet. At that size, Los Angeles planning officials say, the project would not contribute substantially to traffic congestion on Bundy Drive and other nearby Los Angeles streets.

The main question facing Zane and other supporters of the project is, how should any new proposal, even at a reduced size, be presented? Should the council simply rescind its earlier vote--to satisfy the referendum--and come back at a later date and approve the smaller project? Or should a new project, regardless of size, be placed before the voters?

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Zane spoke with council colleagues and with supporters and opponents of the project to try to come up with a ballot measure to compete with the initiative sought by the citizens committee--perhaps one that provided for a smaller airport project and committed some of the revenue it generated to specific city projects or services.

The negotiations were unsuccessful, but Zane said he will continue to meet with individuals and homeowner groups to try to find a compromise.

Sharon Gilpin, one of the organizers of the referendum drive, said that without knowing exactly what the revised project involved, she can’t say whether she would support it or whether a public vote should be held regardless of its amended size.

“All those questions have to be aired in public,” she said.

Representatives of community groups in Sunset Park, the Santa Monica neighborhood nearest the airport, also were noncommittal. “Each project has to be decided on its merit or lack of merits,” said Jennifer Polhemus, a board member of Friends of Sunset Park.

John Kaufman, president of the Sunset Park neighborhood group SPAN, said that because of the large number of signatures collected in the referendum drive, any new project probably should be placed before the voters.

Greg Thomas, a Mar Vista resident who actively opposes the project, said he could not comment on any revised project until the question of whether the city even has the authority to approve such a development at the airport is resolved. A hearing is scheduled for today in Santa Monica Superior Court.

Another question remaining is whether the developer, Reliance Development Group, would be interested in building a smaller project, particularly since the project was originally conceived as a 1.3-million-square-foot development in 1987, when the city initially sought developers to build on the city-owned parcel.

Henry Lambert, president of Reliance, said he was disappointed in the continued opposition to the project and would not say whether his company is still interested in pursuing the development.

“We will try to be responsive to whatever they decide to do,” he said.