Yaroslavsky Joins Panel’s Decision That High-Rise Is Too Ugly to Build

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky announced Thursday that he would oppose a high-rise condominium project that a Westwood citizens panel had rejected repeatedly because it did not believe the building would look good on Wilshire Boulevard.

City planning officials said they could recall no other instance of a large project being stymied solely on the basis of its looks.

Yaroslavsky’s decision effectively kills the project and sends developer Paul Amir back to the drawing boards. “His project is dead,” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s going to start from scratch.”

Amir’s attorney, Maria Hummer, said Thursday that a decision on whether to press forward with a pending appeal before the City Council has not been made. The council usually follows the recommendation of the district councilman on such matters.

Last year, the Westwood Design Review Board rejected the original design for the futuristic 22-story structure as aesthetically unpleasing, then rejected a somewhat revised proposal a few months later. On Wednesday night, at Yaroslavsky’s request, the board members informally reviewed a third version and said they liked it even less.

“I think it’s worse,” said S. Thomas Pollock, who was among the 5-2 majority opposing the design rendered by Arquitectonia, a San Francisco firm. “I’m distressed by the fact a high-quality architecture firm could not come back with something that’s more compatible.”

Yaroslavsky announced his decision after learning of the board’s displeasure with the third design.

All three designs for the 109-unit condominium project, proposed for 10733 Wilshire Blvd., featured multiple angles and a multicolored stucco and glass facade.There also has been criticism that the design looks too much like a Century City office tower for its proposed site, a stretch of residential towers that has come to be called “condo canyon.”

Its two supporters on the design review board are architects, and they dissented strongly with their colleagues, saying the surrounding architecture on Wilshire Boulevard was not worth emulating. Architect Steven H. Kanner urged fellow board members to envision the project as if it were an Eiffel Tower or a Guggenheim art museum in the making.

“They shocked people,” but later became architectural icons, he said.

Yaroslavsky’s decision to support a community design review board is likely to solidify the board’s tenuous standing in the city planning process.

Yaroslavsky was the author of the 1988 ordinance authorizing citizen review panels, but their precise role remains vague and largely untested. The ordinance gave the boards advisory power over building design, landscaping and compatibility, and called upon them to make recommendations to city Planning Director Kenneth Topping, who would have the power to uphold or reject them.

Before Yaroslavsky announced his decision, Westwood homeowner groups challenged the councilman to support the design review board.

“I believe very strongly in that board,” Yaroslavsky said. “Their input is very clear and I share their conclusion. I think the developer in this case is really obligated to meet that board more than halfway.”

In addition to the Westwood panel, three other community boards have been established, and other neighborhoods are clamoring for a similar voice in what projects are built in their neighborhoods.

The legal terrain remains tricky, however, because of potential infringement on property rights. Planning department official Robert Sutton has complained that the review boards are being used “as camouflage to slow down development.”

A committee appointed by the Planning Commission is seeking to develop uniform design standards, in an effort to avoid having the review boards rely on subjective eye-of-the-beholder criteria.

Amir’s project has run a ragged course, losing at the design review board, winning an appeal to planning director Topping, then losing at the Planning Commission, which upheld the initial opinion that the project did not belong on Wilshire.

Associated Press