Parking Garage Plan Angers Neighbors : Development: The owner gets zoning approval for an underground structure at a new motel in Encino. Residents say they were told it would be aboveground.

A group of Encino homeowners were overjoyed last year when they learned of plans to tear down a deteriorating Ventura Boulevard motel and replace it with a new building.

But that relief has turned to bitterness, not over what the owner plans to build on the ground, but what he plans to put below it.

Leaders of the Encino Property Owners Assn. said Friday that they were incensed by a city of Los Angeles zoning administrator’s approval of an underground parking lot for the new motel at 17448 Ventura Blvd. They said the owner of the Encino Inn, King Chai, who lives in Santa Monica, had told them he planned to build a surface parking lot, not an underground structure.

Chai said that he had always intended to build an underground lot and that his plans and diagrams had clearly outlined the structure. But a Los Angeles City Office of Zoning Administration notice on the project that was sent to homeowners last August did not indicate that Chai wanted to build a subterranean lot.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is investigating whether the zoning administrator’s approval of the lot should be withdrawn because proper notice was not given to homeowners.

Encino Property Owners Assn. President Rob Glushon said an underground lot would allow Chai to seek city approval to increase the size of his motel to a density that might be incompatible with the adjacent neighborhood of single-family homes. He said it also would set a bad precedent, noting that no underground parking lots exist south of Ventura Boulevard.

“We feel that someone has tried to pull a fast one,” Glushon said. “We were never notified about this. If we had known this is what they planned to do, we would have opposed it.”

Kathy Lewis, a resident who lives near the motel, said, “I’m absolutely outraged. Someone has deliberately attempted to confuse us and misstated what he planned to do there.”

Chai said he had always planned for underground parking. “Why do these homeowners object to so much?” he said. “It’s an old junk building, and we just want to make it nicer. This is not a communist country. Commercial property owners have rights here.”

Homeowners said that they are demanding a new hearing on the project and that they will file a lawsuit if it is not granted.

The Los Angeles Office of Zoning Administration sent a notice to homeowners who live near the Encino Inn in July, 1989, asking for opinions about the three-story, 60-unit motel that would replace the 28-room motel now on the site.

The notice said Chai also wanted to build a 62-space “surface” parking lot.

At the hearing, Chai discussed plans for the underground parking lot and showed diagrams, said Cindy Miscikowski, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the area where the motel is located.

But Glushon said members of the group did not attend the hearing because they were not opposed to the project, since the notice indicated that parking would be aboveground.

Associate Zoning Administrator William E. Lillenberg two months later approved a conditional-use permit for a two-level underground lot as well as a surface lot, with a total of 62 spaces.

Glushon said the group was prepared to appeal the project to the Los Angeles City Council.