State Panel OKs Venice High-Rise Development : Government: The Coastal Commission unanimously approves the $400-million Channel Gateway project. Culver City is expected to try to block the plan in court.

In a decision that could have a big impact on development in one of the Westside’s busiest traffic corridors, the California Coastal Commission Friday gave its blessing to a $400-million high-rise project in Venice.

Over the objections of neighboring Culver City officials, the state panel, meeting in the North Coast city of Eureka, voted unanimously to let stand the city of Los Angeles’ approval of the Channel Gateway project on 16 acres of prime land.

Developer Jerome Snyder, who acquired the land just outside Marina del Rey last year from a partnership headed by state Sen. Alan E. Robbins (D-Tarzana), said he hopes to start construction on the project within the next few weeks.

“We’re obviously very pleased,” Snyder said. “It’s an important step in a long, arduous process.”

In a letter to the commission, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes Venice, urged the panel to favor Channel Gateway, saying that a delay could jeopardize $67 million in low-cost financing for 109 affordable apartment units to be built there.

The unanimous vote did not include that of Commissioner Mark Nathanson, who served as the real estate broker for Robbins in the deal with Snyder. Nathanson did not attend the meeting.

Culver City officials, who are expected to go to court to try to block the project, had appealed to the state panel to reject Los Angeles’ earlier approval of the project, citing environmental concerns.

However, they are also angry with Los Angeles for suing to stop a $160-million shopping center in their city, and their involvement in the Channel Gateway matter is widely viewed as an act of retaliation.

The feud is part of a larger contest to gobble up the remaining traffic capacity in the heavily congested Lincoln Boulevard corridor that has pitted Los Angeles, Culver City and Los Angeles County against one other, with each entity racing to get approval for projects that it backs.

Culver City officials were chagrined after Los Angeles City Council members moved swiftly last month to approve the massive Channel Gateway project less than a day after a key council committee gave its blessing.

Channel Gateway would be built only three blocks from the proposed Marina Place shopping mall in Culver City. In addition, a virtual city within a city called Playa Vista is planned just south of Marina del Rey. Also, the county also wants to redevelop the marina.

Together, the projects contemplated within the four-mile corridor that stretches from Santa Monica to Westchester, if approved, would include new office space equal to nearly half that of downtown Los Angeles, and enough retail space to house four malls the size of Westside Pavilion.

Channel Gateway, to be built in the Oxford Triangle area of Venice, won widespread support after Snyder acquired the land from Robbins, who retains a limited interest.

Working with neighborhood activists and Galanter, Snyder altered Robbins’ plan to build a 2.1-million-square-foot regional shopping center, office and residential project. Instead, Channel Gateway will include an office tower, at least 512 luxury condominiums in two 16-story buildings, and 544 apartments, including the units for very-low-income tenants. It will provide parking for 3,460 vehicles.

Although Caltrans officials have warned that Channel Gateway and the other projects planned for the corridor are certain to worsen already congested traffic, Channel Gateway’s supporters insist that its merits outweigh such concerns.

Several commissioners were effusive in their praise of the project.

“In my seven years on the commission, I can count on one hand the number of projects as sensitive from a social standpoint as this one,” Commissioner David Malcolm of Chula Vista said.

Commissioner Lily Cervantes of Salinas called it “a great project.”

“For once, we’ve got something here that will not just help the rich people and the actors and actresses living in Malibu, but that does something for working-class people to enable them to be able to afford living along the coast,” she said.

Russell reported from Eureka and Rabin reported from Santa Monica.