Council Gives Final OK to Sport Chalet : Development: A $25-million shopping village, including the sporting goods store, will be built in La Canada Flintridge.

With a hint of fanfare mixed with relief, the La Canada Flintridge City Council gave final approval Monday to the Sport Chalet to build the largest shopping village in the sleepy mountainside community.

The action ended a six-year quest by owners of the successful sporting goods chain to replace a conglomerate of aged storefronts that have served as its founding headquarters for more than 30 years.

In a series of cut-and-dried votes, the council approved six resolutions giving the Sport Chalet permission to build a European-style village--with a new sporting goods store and offices, a tony gourmet market, retail outlets and restaurants--on an 11.7-acre site at the heart of the semi-rural community at Foothill Boulevard and Angeles Crest Highway.

“This is the conditional-use permit,” said Councilman James Edwards with a flourish moments before the council voted 4 to 1 in favor of the Sport Chalet proposal.

Controversy over the $25-million project had deeply divided the community between those who want to retain the quiet ambience of largely residential estates and the need for commercial tax dollars to pay the costs of maintaining a city.

The Sport Chalet is among the top five commercial enterprises in the city of 20,800, where antiquated commercial development dots a strip of Foothill Boulevard. Industry is prohibited.

The shopping center controversy was the focus of a hotly contested City Council election in April in which three council members who favored the development defeated opponents who were critical of the plan.

Councilman Ed Phelps, who has carved a niche as a maverick on the five-member board, voted against most of the motions approving the final plan because he said the size of the project is too large for the community. Phelps, like many opponents of the project, had asked that it be scaled back.

But even opponents admitted in the last few weeks that the project had come a long way from the strip-center shopping complex first proposed by owner Norbert Olberz in 1984. After more than a year of hearings and repeated changes in the plan, there appeared to be little chance for agreement between opponents and proponents of the shopping center.

The stalemate broke last month when owners of the Sport Chalet and its entourage of professional architects, planners and expediters met with a small group leading community opposition. Differences were settled in a series of closed sessions.

Residents and developers worked out a compromise for a quaint shopping village with a European flavor. The sessions were an “important part of how the shopping center was approved,” said Craig Ewing, director of community development.

“We have developed a rapport,” said Robbie E. Monsma, leader of the I Love La Canada Flintridge Committee, a residents group that waged a formidable battle against the Sport Chalet.

“We are very pleased and satisfied. We feel a sense of security,” she said, following a recent meeting with Sport Chalet officials.

In the end, owners Norbert and Irene Olberz won permission to build shops and offices totaling 147,000 square feet. The plan had been significantly changed five times during the last year and had undergone a series of 23 public reviews.

The final plan requires the Sport Chalet to begin construction within a year and to complete the project by July, 1992.

The development will entail razing a series of deteriorating buildings, including a converted gas station, that now serve as home to the sprawling sporting goods store and its complex of sports equipment rental shops. A neighborhood of 30 single-family homes adjacent to the Sport Chalet and acquired by Olberz over the years also will be leveled to make way for the new development.

The project will be the largest single commercial complex in La Canada Flintridge. Its architectural style is expected to set the standard for future commercial development in the city.

Millard Archuleta, architect for the Sport Chalet, is proposing a Craftsman-style design for the village, which would feature pedestrian-oriented streets built to converge in a one-way traffic circle that would serve as the focus of the project.

Final design will require the approval of the city Planning Commission and the council.