Hidden Hills Zoning Change May Be Too Little, Too Late : Housing: A developer says the council’s failure to approve his entire project will prevent him from obtaining financing. He plans to press a lawsuit.

A developer behind a plan to build lower-cost housing for senior citizens in wealthy Hidden Hills said the plan is in its death throes because the City Council declined to act on his entire development proposal.

He said he will press on with a lawsuit for damages.

A newly elected council majority, which opposes developer Danny Howard’s proposal, voted 5 to 0 Monday night to approve zoning changes that would allow up to nine single-family houses on a portion of the land in the gated city of estate homes in the southwestern San Fernando Valley.

But the houses were the least controversial part of the development plan, which also included a 48-unit apartment building for senior citizens and a five-story office building. Council members said they were not ready to act on those parts of the project or on Howard’s proposal to subdivide the land for the nine houses.

Without council approval of the entire project, especially the subdivision proposal, Howard said, he will be unable to obtain bank financing to complete his purchase of the property in time to meet an escrow deadline Sunday and thus will lose the land.

He said he will press a lawsuit that he filed against the city last December contending that the city made a binding agreement last year to approve his project. The recently elected council challenges the legality of the agreement and maintains it is not binding.

The lawsuit was clearly in the minds of the council Monday night. Included in the zoning ordinance was specific language that said the approval was being granted only to “accommodate the developer’s timetable” and “without acknowledging the legitimacy of the developer’s position in the litigation.”

Mayor H. Brian Herdeg and Councilman David G. Stanley said it was premature to consider the controversial portion of Howard’s proposal because the council is awaiting more information about environmental issues such as grading and a proposed retaining wall.

Herdeg also objected to what he said was Howard’s attitude that “we’re obligated to approve it because of his damn lawsuit.”

Last month, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge declined to grant Howard’s request to order the council to approve the entire development. Judge R. William Schoettler Jr. said, however, that Howard remained free to seek damages in his lawsuit. The judge speculated Howard could win a “seven-figure” judgment from the city.

If Howard loses his option to buy the land and pulls out of the project, another builder could conceivably make another proposal for the land, Howard said. But whether such a proposal would include lower-cost housing or a commercial building would be up to the new developer, he said.