Builder Sues Torrance, Tries to Block Arts Center

A developer who has already filed a $14-million lawsuit against Torrance slapped the city with another suit this week in an attempt to block construction of its Cultural Arts Center.

Jerry Conrow, owner of an office building on Crenshaw Boulevard called The Park Beyond the Park, charges in a lawsuit filed Monday that the city should have completed an environmental impact report before starting construction of the $12.2-million complex last month.

The city’s failure to do so, Conrow said, has created massive parking problems in Torrance’s already crowded Civic Center, where construction crews have taken over more than 100 parking spaces during initial grading of the site.

“They’re not their own country. They have a responsibility to prove that their project is environmentally sound,” Conrow said in an interview. “How do they get away with this?”

In January, Conrow filed a lawsuit against the City Council, charging that its sudden passage last October of strict new parking requirements for buildings used as courthouses killed a pending $14-million, seven-year deal under which Los Angeles County would have leased courtroom space in a building he owns. South Bay Municipal Court administrators have said Conrow’s building was one of three under consideration.

Under the new regulations, one parking spot must be provided for every 150 square feet of leased courtroom space. Conrow charges that the rules were created specifically to assure that his 125,000-square-foot building could never be used as a courthouse.

City officials, who have had to deal with parking problems at the existing courthouse, say they created the new rules to prevent similar problems elsewhere in the city.

“How is it that they have a standard for me and they have a different standard for themselves?” Conrow said. “They want me to come up with more parking spaces, and they are ending up with a negative number of spaces once they’re done (with the Cultural Arts Center).”

City Manager LeRoy Jackson said the city is conducting a comprehensive review of Civic Center parking to find a way to get more spaces.

Roughly half of the estimated 100 to 150 spaces currently blocked by construction of the complex should be restored by the end of May, he said, as grading is completed and framing of the buildings begins.

“We should end up with a net (increase in) parking spaces (when the center is completed), but I don’t know the numbers at this point,” Jackson said.

The city also has an agreement with Epson America, which is completing its headquarters just north of the Civic Center, to use some of that company’s parking spaces at night and on weekends during activities at the arts center.

Scheduled for completion in August, 1991, the 63,700-square-foot arts complex will include a 497-seat theater, a visual arts wing, a performing arts wing, a children’s art center, a community meeting hall with banquet seating for 300 and a 15,000-square-foot festival plaza with a small outdoor stage.

Mayor Katy Geissert expressed disgust at Conrow’s latest suit. “I think it’s a vindictive action,” she said.

City Atty. Kenneth Nelson said he is researching the arts center’s 25-year history to see whether an environmental report should have been done.

The city’s Civic Center master plan first showed an arts complex in 1965, he said, six years before passage of the California Environmental Quality Act, which regulates when environmental impact reports must be done.

Creation of the early plans so long before the act’s passage may excuse the city from doing a report, Nelson said.

Even if a judge were to require the city to conduct an environmental study, Nelson said it could be completed in 30 days.