Postal Service Apartment Plan Is Greed, Picus Says

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus accused the U.S. Postal Service of “unabashed greed” for a sketchy proposal to build an apartment complex on land it owns in Encino.

Picus, echoing the concerns of Encino residents, said on Thursday that the proposed 112-unit complex is incompatible with the single-family homes and small businesses that surround the site next to the Encino post office branch on White Oak Avenue.

“All they want is money, money, money,” said Picus, who described the Postal Service as an “uncaring, faceless bureaucracy” for its plan to lease the land to a developer despite objections from neighbors.

She has introduced a motion that would prevent the complex from being built.

The Postal Service announced last year that it was looking for developers interested in building on the property. It entered exclusive negotiations with Tutor-Saliba in January.

The project is still in its infancy, according to Bob Vincent, director of marketing and development for Tutor-Saliba Properties, the San Fernando Valley development company that has been working with the Postal Service on the project. No project plans have been developed, and Tutor-Saliba and the Postal Service have yet to begin serious discussions on the proposal, he said.

“We don’t really have anything in the works as yet,” he said.

Vincent said his firm’s initial proposal for the project was a 112-unit complex on 54,000 square feet of land, where the vacant Encino Municipal Court building now sits. He said if Tutor-Saliba were able to acquire additional land now used for parking by Postal Service employees, the project could grow to as many as 160 units.

Picus and residents said a complex of that size would destroy the “stable neighborhood” of 1950s tract homes and small businesses.

“The massive apartment complex proposed for this site threatens to shatter the neighborhood’s peace and privacy,” Picus said in a prepared statement. “It is totally out of scale both in size and density. The building would tower . . . over modest homes and would house a population a dozen times more dense than the neighborhood around it.”

Rob Glushon, president of the Encino Property Owners Assn., said the proposed project was “ill-conceived and makes no sense, except to those who would profit from this stupid idea.”

Picus introduced a motion last week that would prohibit the construction of apartments and condominiums on the property by changing the zoning. Her motion, submitted to the Planning and Land-Use Management Committee, would also require the approval of Picus and the property owners association on any development on the property.