Developer Pays Homeowners Opposed to Him : Agreement: He will also make them a gated community and hire security guards. They have dropped their fight against his proposed business park.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission voted Thursday to approve plans for a huge Sylmar business park being sought by a developer who has agreed to pay $200,000 to a local homeowner group that once opposed his project.

Officers of the Saddletree Ranch Homeowners Assn. and lobbyists for developer John Symonds confirmed the six-figure payment was part of a private agreement being negotiated between the two parties as Symonds seeks city approvals for his 2-million-square-foot Sunset Farms Business Park.

Symonds’ attorney, Mark S. Armbruster, said the developer also has agreed to pay to make Saddletree a gated community; to hire security guards to provide a 24-hour patrol of the 144-home tract for at least five years; to build a large archway to mark the entrance to Saddletree; and to pay for stop signs and speed bumps in the tract.

The total package, including the $200,000, will be worth “more than $300,000” to the Saddletree group, Armbruster said.

The proposed $200,000 payment was unknown to at least two city planning commissioners before they voted on Symonds’ project, located north of Foothill Boulevard near the Golden State Freeway.

The commission backed Symonds’ plan and rejected the advice of its Planning Department that the project be scaled back to require 17.5 acres of additional open space above the 55.5 acres that had been originally required, lower building heights and greater distances between structures.

The Saddletree homeowner group had once been the principal foe of the Symonds project. But Thursday, a vice president of the group testified that the group does not oppose it.

Commission President Bill Luddy, upon learning about the developer payment to the homeowner group, said: “It certainly raises questions. It’s troubling. But I don’t know if it changes the underlying facts about the case.” The commission often relies on homeowner-group testimony to weigh the merits of planning cases, Luddy noted.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s chief deputy, David Mays, said he was aware that a private deal was being negotiated between the homeowners and the developer but was not aware of a $200,000 payment being part of the proposed pact. Bernardi represents the area.

“I’m sure our office will have questions about that. It’s certainly unique,” Mays said.

Luddy and Commissioner Ted Stein, both of whom voted for the project as proposed by Symonds, remarked during the commission’s discussion of the project about the lack of community opposition.

After Commissioner Suzette Neiman said she was “not comfortable” with permitting six-story office buildings on the Symonds property, now a 238-acre parcel of vacant land, Stein said the “political reality” is that neither council members nor homeowners were objecting to the project.

In an interview, Neiman predicted that the project’s size would “come back to haunt us” because other Sylmar developers would seek similar large-scale commercial projects. “You could zip off the freeway and find this area--it was an enchantment,” she said.

Saddletree Vice President Kim Schulte said the $200,000 could be spent as the association saw fit. But the intent is to use the money to landscape the Saddletree tract, he said.

“We’re not being bought off,” added Clay Murray, the Saddletree association’s president. Murray said Saddletree homeowners are aware of their board’s negotiations with the developer and condone them as a way to reach a “mutually beneficial agreement.”