Woo, Bradley Join Forces to Oppose Fryman Canyon Development

Mayor Tom Bradley and Councilman Mike Woo teamed up Thursday to try to halt a proposed 26-home development above Studio City that would result in filling up a canyon and the burial of one of the few year-round streams in the Hollywood Hills .

The pair urged city Department of Building and Safety officials to re-evaluate their 1988 decision to issue a grading permit to Fred Sahadi, the developer of the 63-acre site in Fryman Canyon, and warned Sahadi that they would seek to halt his project under federal laws that protect year-round streams.

Woo, in whose district the proposed development is located, called Fryman Canyon an irreplaceable wilderness area. The canyon is located near a lookout point along Mulholland Drive that offers a panoramic view of the city below.

Bradley planning deputy Jane Blumenfeld said the mayor is hopeful the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a public agency committed to acquiring parkland in the hills, will be able to buy the canyon from Sahadi, a Century City-based developer. She said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, reportedly has met with Sahadi about the property.

A conservancy purchase of the site would “be an ideal solution,” Blumenfeld said. Edmiston could not be reached for comment.

“This project has been in the works for nine years, and it has been through 23 public hearings,” Sahadi said. “This is serious business.” He would not comment further on the Bradley-Woo efforts to checkmate it.

The discovery that a year-round stream runs through the canyon was a breakthrough for the foes of Sahadi’s project. Under the federal Clean Water Act, any project that would endanger or adversely effect a year-round stream first must obtain a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Blumenfeld said.

To obtain the permit requires the filing of a environmental impact report. Preparing such a report would entail costly delays. In addition, Blumenfeld said, she was confident an environmental report would recommend against the Sahadi project.

As now planned, that project would require channeling the Fryman Canyon stream into a pipe and then the burial of the pipe under thousands of tons of earth as the canyon is filled in.