Sierra Club Suit Over Arts Park Settled

The Sierra Club has settled a 1 1/2-year-old lawsuit that sought to block construction of a controversial arts center in the Sepulveda Basin.

Friday afternoon’s out-of-court agreement with federal officials ensures that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers--which owns the flood-control basin and leases it to the city of Los Angeles for parkland and other uses--will consider locating the envisioned Arts Park L.A. outside the basin.

Environmental laws require that other locations be considered, and the corps recently began to do so.

The Sierra Club filed suit in October, 1988, because it believed the requirement was being neglected.

“The excellent alternative sites outside the basin will now get a fair hearing before the corps makes any decision approving use of the basin,” said Barry A. Fisher, the Sierra Club’s attorney.

The environmental group has opposed construction in the basin, the largest remaining open space in the San Fernando Valley and a foraging ground for migrating Canada geese.

Though this legal battle has ended, the future of the cultural center--where it would be built and what it would look like--still could be altered as a result of the federally mandated environmental impact study, which will assess the effects of construction and resulting traffic increases on the neighborhood.

It remains to be seen whether money will be available to build the arts park.

A private Valley group, the Cultural Foundation, has been working for nine years to raise funds for the project.

The foundation says it has some of the money needed but will not say how much.

The corps has agreed in principal to sublease the necessary city parkland to the foundation.

The arts park, as it is planned, would be a 60-acre, $70-million complex of theaters, workshops and exhibit spaces near the corner of Balboa and Victory boulevards.

The foundation hopes the center would lure world-class symphony and ballet to the San Fernando Valley.

Sierra Club officials were angered last summer when the Cultural Foundation held a design competition and selected architectural models for Arts Park’s major structures.

The models were specifically designed for the basin.

A subsequent study of other sites could not fairly weigh all the alternatives if the foundation had already spent time and money developing plans for the basin, Sierra Club officials said.

Now, however, the environmentalists appear satisfied that such a study has begun.

The first of several public hearings on the project will be held April 24 from 2 to 5 p.m. and from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Naval and Marine Reserve Training Center, 6337 Balboa Blvd., Encino.

“That’s what we’ve been wanting them to do,” said Jill Swift, chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter. “It’s unfortunate that it wasn’t done three years ago so we didn’t have to go to court.”

Linda Kinnee, the foundation’s executive director, said she was delighted by the settlement.

Both the foundation and the corps insist that they have followed the letter of the law in preparing for Arts Park.

“We’re doing all the things that we’re supposed to do,” Kinnee said.