Time as Ally : Development: Venice mini-mall project was bogged down at City Hall. A little-used state speed-up law got it approved unconditionally.

Community activist Steve Schlein has long had a bee in his bonnet about the proposed mini-mall with 12 fast-food restaurants and a few dozen boutiques that would loom over his home on the Venice boardwalk.

Ask about Venice, or just say hello, and Schlein would rarely fail to bring up the long-stalled Stephen Blanchard project for 615 Ocean Front Walk at Sunset Avenue.

The proposal calls for a 21,269-square-foot, three-story commercial and office building with two levels of underground parking and a price tag of more than $2 million.

In his quiet, fervent manner, Schlein set out his complaints about the size, appropriateness and impact of the project, amid vague accusations that these concerns were going to be overlooked because of the developer’s alleged special access at Los Angeles City Hall.

The project was going to be approved despite legitimate community objections, Schlein feared.

To guard against that, Schlein and another project opponent kept an eye on every aspect of the voluminous city-required paper work. As it turned out, he should have been eyeing the clock.

The developer’s attorney, Sherman Stacey, recently invoked, apparently for the first time in Los Angeles, a 12-year-old state law under which a developer is automatically entitled to build his project if the city takes too long to make a decision.

The city was forced to give the Blanchard project unconditional approval.

That action could have broad citywide ramifications. Other projects in the clogged planning pipeline could be automatically approved, despite objectionable or illegal features.

Schlein and other neighbors are contemplating a lawsuit.

And by all accounts, the Los Angeles Planning Department is abuzz with activity to limit the damage and prevent further automatic approvals under the state law, called the Permit Streamlining Act.

One prominent land-use attorney said the sudden use of the law by a developer may signal a “growing revolt by property owners” and their attorneys, who can no longer tolerate the inefficiency of the city--a frustration they share with citizens such as Schlein.

There has already been a small flurry of calls to City Hall from other land-use attorneys and developers seeking information on the conditions under which the law can be invoked, city officials said.

The law does not apply to projects for which a zoning change or a General Plan change is involved, but it does apply to projects awaiting environmental clearance and special permits for such things as serving liquor. Blanchard’s plan includes a food court for 150 people with beer and wine available.

Other permits that need to be obtained separately for the project include a mini-mall permit, a coastal development permit and approvals for setback and other variances.

Planning Department officials insist that they have the matter under control, with only two other cases identified as nearing deadline, but the situation is viewed with alarm in other quarters.

“I think what has happened is the Planning Department and the Transportation Department have essentially broken down,” said land-use attorney Dan Garcia, a former head of the Planning Commission.

“The wheels are off the car now,” Garcia said. “The Streamlining Act has been under used in Los Angeles, but it’s is going to be used more now.”

Venice-area City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter also reacted strongly, saying automatic approval cheats citizens out of their right to fight projects they believe will damage their communities. She predicted “unmitigated disaster” if some mammoth projects were allowed to take advantage of the law.

At stake is the city’s ability to control “its own land-use destiny,” Galanter wrote in a letter to Planning Director Kenneth Topping.

“It’s a pretty scary indictment of the Planning Department’s ability to get done the job they need to have done in the time they have to do it,’ Galanter added in a telephone interview, predicting that an “enormous number of projects” could be affected.

The issue could also prove politically troublesome to Galanter, who is seeking reelection next year amid criticism from vocal Venice activists who say she has gotten too cozy with developers, a charge she strongly denies.

Galanter is on record as approving the concept of the Blanchard project because it provides visitor services at the beach. She is not on record as approving the specifics of the plan.

The Permit Streamlining Act was enacted in 1978. City planning officials and land-use attorneys agree that everyone was familiar with it, though it has been refined by court decisions over time and has been considered difficult to enforce.

However, there was apparently no mechanism in the Planning Department to speed up projects to meet deadlines because no one had tried to use the law until now.

Garcia said developers were typically “persuaded or otherwise cajoled” by planning officials to agree to extensions. They acquiesced because they valued their relationship with the officials, he said.

After the city attorney issued his opinion favoring automatic approval of the Blanchard project, the Planning Department has been reviewing all of its internal policies, said acting zoning administrator Jack Sedwick. “We’re taking this very seriously, meeting once a week.”

The Blanchard case was neither inactive nor cast aside in a dusty file cabinet and forgotten. The Planning Department file contains correspondence from the early months of 1990. Among the letters were warnings from the developer’s attorney that he was going to invoke the law if officials didn’t make a decision fast.

In a letter dated Dec. 5, 1989, Stacey put the city on notice about the law, as required before it can be invoked. Galanter and her planning deputy, Jim Bickhart, were aware of the letter. Bickhart said he regarded the threat as “saber rattling” because he had never heard of the Permit Streamlining Act. “I’ve never heard its name uttered in these hallways,” he said.

Still, Bickhart said he nagged Planning Department officials to move on the project. It was held up in the department’s environmental review unit, which is particularly understaffed, officials said.

Despite the warning, however, no decision was made on the pending environmental matters, and in April attorney Stacey wrote again. Zoning administrator James Crisp turned the file over to the city attorney’s office, which ruled that the city had taken too long and had no choice but to issue permits without considering the project’s merits. Crisp said he had no comment on the case.

There is no right of appeal because no specific findings were made, Schlein has been told by the city.

But Schlein and others in his neighborhood have consulted an attorney, Barry Fisher, who argues that the Permit Streamlining Act was not intended to supersede the California Environmental Quality Act and would not be interpreted that way in court.

“To say this trumps the whole system is not what this law is all about,” Fisher said.

That was also the Planning Department’s view was, said Deputy Planning Director Franklin Eberhard. Officials erroneously operated on the belief that as long as environmental clearances were pending, the law couldn’t be invoked, he said.

As cases backlogged, Eberhard allowed public hearings to be held before the clearances were obtained, although the zoning administrators could not make a decision after the hearing without the environmental go-ahead.

This left a growing group of dangling cases, including Blanchard’s Venice project, and set the stage for use of the Permit Streamlining Act.

Eberhard reversed department policy late last year and stopped holding premature hearings, which means that newer cases in the system are not so vulnerable. For the Permit Streamlining Act to be invoked, a public hearing must have been held without a decision being reached.

In the Blanchard case, the hearing was held in April, 1989, but no decision was rendered before Stacey demanded a timely answer under the little-used state law.

The Permit Streamlining Act allows six months for a decision if a full Environmental Impact Report is not required, and a year if one is.

Blanchard applied for permits for his project in 1988 and waited 20 months for approval.

Eberhard said talk of disaster or of a flood of projects being approved without proper city scrutiny is exaggerated. “(The Permit Streamlining Act) is not going to open the floodgates because we’re going to take action to preclude it,” he said.

Eberhard said only two projects have been identified as approaching deadlines, and they are being dealt with.

Others, however, are skeptical that the number of tardy projects is that low or that a swift solution to the problem is possible. “The whole Planning Department is a morass,” Bickhart said. “Things go in and don’t come out for years.”

Bickhart said the department has been taking 18 months for projects requiring full EIRs. He said 90 such projects are pending, and 50 of them have not yet been assigned to a staff person and are in jeopardy.

The Blanchard project still must pass muster with the state Coastal Commission. Stacey said it is not necessarily advantageous for the developer to go to the commission without the kind of city approval he sought, in which issues would have been addressed and resolved. But he said the delays were “more than intolerable.”

Blanchard is in Europe and unavailable for comment, Stacey said.

Schlein, meanwhile, continues to amass his file on the Blanchard project, which despite his vigilance, and in keeping with his worst fears, is invading the neighborhood.