Committee Releases Draft Proposal for San Pedro Rezoning : Development: The citizens advisory panel calls for downzoning in some areas but encourages certain types of growth. The report will be debated.

In the first step toward a wholesale rezoning of San Pedro, a citizens panel has released a plan that would reduce density in some areas while encouraging development of housing for senior citizens and construction of condominiums rather than apartments.

The detailed plan, made public Wednesday, was drafted by a subcommittee of the San Pedro Community Plan Advisory Committee, appointed last year by Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores to help guide future growth. The seaside community experienced a boom in apartment development during the 1980s.

The plan’s authors say it is a compromise between those who want to slow--or even stop--growth in San Pedro and those who complain that further controls on development will deprive builders and property owners of profitable opportunities.

“What the subcommittee recommended was a moderate, middle-of-the-road approach to the future of the community,” subcommittee chairman Leron Gubler said. “It was not a blanket downzoning, nor was it a relinquishing of the responsibility to deal with concerns that the community had.”

The subcommittee’s draft, which must still be considered by the full committee, Flores and the City Council, was praised by city officials and community members. “I think it really is going to cut this needless higher density that I think is disfiguring the community,” said Howard Uller, executive director of Toberman Settlement House, a San Pedro social service agency.

The proposed controls are intended to replace a temporary law enacted by the City Council Dec. 13. Though they will likely act as a blueprint for permanent changes, they may not remain intact.

“It’s going to go through a lot of give and take,” city planner Tom Glick said. “This is just the fledgling, the seed.”

Said subcommittee member Joe Guarrasi: “This is not airtight.”

In drafting its report, the subcommittee combed San Pedro, block by block, to compare existing land use with the zoning. The group paid particular attention to areas zoned RD1.5, a designation that sparked an uproar in the community because it allowed developers to tear down homes in predominantly single-family neighborhoods and replace them with apartments.

According to Gubler, the subcommittee’s plan calls for about half the properties zoned RD1.5 to receive new, lower-density zoning designations--either R1, which allows only single-family development; R2, which allows a maximum of two units on a lot, or RD2, which allows one unit per 2,000 square feet of lot space. By contrast, RD1.5 allows one unit per 1,500 square feet of lot space.

The report, which may be obtained at Flores’ office in the San Pedro Municipal Building, 638 S. Beacon St., also suggests:

* Increasing the density of a block near the Anderson Memorial Senior Center to allow as many as six units per lot, versus the current three, if the housing is for senior citizens.

* Zoning Rancho San Pedro, a city-owned housing complex for low-income people, for single-family development in case the city sells it. That designation was criticized by advocates for the poor, who said it would drive poor people out if the land were ever sold. But committee members said they believe the single-family designation would deter the interests of developers, and thereby keep the housing project intact.

* Zoning the stretch of Harbor Boulevard from 3rd Street north to the Harbor Freeway on ramp--including the two blocks that front Rancho San Pedro--for manufacturing. That would permit commercial development but prohibit residential construction. Gubler said the committee believed there should be no future residential development on that portion of Harbor Boulevard.

* Increasing building height limits along Beacon Street, between 9th and 13th Streets, from 26 feet to 45 feet--a move intended to allow construction to take advantage of harbor views. But the change would have to be approved by the California Coastal Commission, which has discouraged tall developments in the coastal zone.

* Permitting developers in most of “Old San Pedro”--the area from 10th Street to 21st and Crescent streets, between Palos Verdes Street and Pacific Avenue--to build three units on a lot, but only if they are condominiums that adhere to strict design guidelines the committee develops. Otherwise, the maximum would be two units on a lot.

Gubler said he hoped that provision would encourage necessary redevelopment while protecting some well-kept older homes. He said the area contains “some of our finest architectural gems and some of the most dilapidated housing as well.”

However, the recommendation was criticized by homeowner Cathy Fergus and her husband, Tom Dawson, who renovated a historic home on 17th Street in Old San Pedro. Fergus said she felt the recommendation would do little to preserve historic homes. “I’m very disappointed,” she said Wednesday at the committee’s meeting.

Advisory committee chairman Noah Modisett, however, told Fergus that another subcommittee is considering historic preservation. He said that group’s recommendations, when coupled with the zoning subcommittee’s plan, would help preserve historic homes.

The 25-member advisory committee has been at work since March. Its first task was to draft the temporary--or so-called interim control--ordinance that was recently adopted by the council.

That ordinance, which spent seven months working its way through the city bureaucracy, includes a ban on new apartment construction on blocks that are zoned for apartments but where more than 50% of the homes are either single-family or duplexes.

The interim control ordinance--or ICO--went through myriad changes before its adoption and was the subject of intense community debate. But Mario Juravich, deputy to Councilwoman Flores, predicted the upcoming debate over the proposal released Wednesday would not be nearly as heated.

“I’m convinced that most people do want some controls. They want to protect their neighborhoods and I think these recommendations, by and large, do that,” he said. “I think this is going to be much easier than the ICO.”