Huge Porter Ranch Project Has More Red Tape to Snip

Although the City Council has approved the massive Porter Ranch development project, it will be another year before the tracks of bulldozers cover up the footprints of hikers on the 1,300 acres in the Chatsworth hills.

The city and Porter Ranch Development Co. must settle several issues before the foundation for the first house or shopping center can be laid. The only construction allowed to begin sooner is a fire station and the roads to support it.

Still, the scrub-covered hills north of the Simi Valley Freeway are about to change forever. Not just brush or hiking trails will disappear under the dozer’s track. In some cases, so will the hills.

Although the developer has promised not to alter the hilly topography of the area, the hills that stand when the project is completed in 20 years will not be the hills that exist today, according to a city official.

The developer will use a new process known as land-form grading, said a spokesman, in which “you just kind of reshape things to make it so a street can fit there.”

Jim Bolger, 62, of Woodland Hills, hikes through the area as often as four times a week. He said he will continue to do so after the project is built, but it just won’t be the same.

“It will sort of spoil the area,” he said.

Despite vocal protests against the project from area homeowners, the City Council voted 14 to 0 on Tuesday to allow development to proceed after the area’s councilman, Hal Bernson, backed the project.

By approving the company’s basic land-use plan, the City Council cleared the way to transform the undeveloped hills in Chatsworth into a vast complex that could provide housing for up to 11,000 people and jobs for up to 21,000.

The land-use plan approved by the council stipulates only the type of development--residential, commercial or recreational--that can occur in parts of the project area. It does not specify which tracts will be developed first or where structures will be built.

The firm must receive City Council approval of more detailed construction maps before it can build anything, a process that will take at least 18 months but could take up to six years.

The vagueness of many aspects of the existing plan is readily apparent. Company spokesman Paul Clarke noted that when the firm builds a proposed neighborhood mall at an intersection where Mason Avenue and Rinaldi Street will one day meet, it will “probably put some houses in as well.”

Nor has Porter Ranch Development Co. yet decided which tracts it will develop in the first stages, Clarke said. The company will attempt to sell houses before it builds them, he said, so it will consider buyers’ demands in deciding which tracts to submit to the city for approval first.

During such a process, Ron Mahen, a city planner, said the city’s response usually is “yes, with conditions.”

Typical “conditions” include larger sewage systems and wider roads, said Nancy Scrivner, an associate with the city’s Planning Department.

Because of the vastness of the Porter Ranch project, the city and developer will attempt to negotiate a special agreement in the coming days that will spell out whether the developer can, for example, increase the density of homes in exchange for a pledge to include badly needed affordable housing.

Clarke said that even when all the tracts are developed, Porter Ranch will retain its current topographic form.

Scrivner disagreed. The land generally will remain hilly, she said, but “the topography won’t be the same.”