Talks on Land for Courthouse OKd : Chatsworth: Supervisors’ approval of negotiations comes despite the protests of residents worried about the impact of the facility on their neighborhood.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, over strong objections by a band of Chatsworth homeowners and their elected representatives, took the first step Tuesday to buy a controversial 9.3-acre site in Chatsworth for a new municipal courthouse.

The 3-1 vote, with Supervisor Mike Antonovich the sole dissenter, will allow court officials to enter negotiations with developer Alexander Haagen. Haagen bought the property at Plummer Street and Winnetka Avenue last winter for $10 million, the supervisors said.

Supervisor Ed Edelman did not attend the meeting.

Barring delays, court officials anticipate that the three-story courthouse could be completed by 1995.

It is direly needed to handle a burgeoning caseload of west San Fernando Valley civil and traffic cases, along with a small percentage of felony arraignments and preliminary hearings, court officials have said. It is delaying other courthouses from being built because they are lower on the court’s priority funding list, they said.

But owners of houses near the chosen site remain steadfastly opposed to a courthouse across the street from a residential area, and it is unlikely that the contentious dispute over the site has ended.

Just hours after the vote, in fact, Antonovich expressed hopes that board members would rescind their support for the Chatsworth site if it could be proved that a less expensive courthouse could be built on an alternative site at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Marilla Street.

That site already has been rejected by court officials. They said it is too small, it would cost the county millions of extra dollars to develop because it holds a lumberyard that would have to be dismantled, and it would need an expensive parking structure. Antonovich said he believes an adjacent piece of land could be purchased for a parking lot at a reasonable cost.

Antonovich said he will investigate use of the alternative site as court officials complete the process of negotiating for the Chatsworth land and obtaining an environmental impact report on it.

City Councilman Hal Bernson said he intends to attack the supervisors’ vote on the grounds that the environmental impact report should have been completed even before the board took action on the Chatsworth site.

The county’s legal advisers have said an environmental impact study is not necessary on land that has yet to be purchased by the county. But Bernson nonetheless said he planned to ask the city council to vote today to have City Atty. James Hahn investigate the environmental question, Bernson aide Ali Sarr said.

Deputy Court Administrator Robert Quist, meanwhile, said Tuesday that he hopes the board’s action will clear the air after a long and bitter struggle over the controversial courthouse site. Specifically, he said he intends to meet with the Chatsworth Homeowners Assn., whose members have been fearful that a courthouse would bring graffiti, crime, noise and more traffic to their neighborhoods.

Two busloads of Chatsworth homeowners attended Tuesday’s meeting but failed in their fervid attempt to persuade the board that alternative courthouse sites would have less of an impact on residents. They protested that courthouses are incompatible with nearby houses, despite assurances of court officials that families living close to other branch courthouses have had no problems like the ones dreaded by Chatsworth residents.

The difference is that other branch courthouses are in redevelopment areas that welcome them, several homeowners said.

“What we have here is a community of a lot of very expensive homes,” Chatsworth real estate agent Myrna Lightstone said.

Board Chairman Pete Schabarum said that in the end he sided with court officials who pitched the site at Plummer Street and Winnetka Avenue as the least expensive and most practical. Schabarum said homeowners’ fears that “screwballs, loafers and bums” would invade their neighborhood across Plummer Street were adequately addressed by court officials, who steadfastly denied that the courthouse would handle many felonies.

Schabarum dismissed the opposition of Councilwoman Joy Picus as the position of a politician who twists the familiar residents’ refrain “Not in My Back Yard” into one of her own: “Not in My District.”

Residents refused to be mollified by Quist’s characterization of the proposed courthouse as a place where justice would be meted out mostly to people with business disputes or first-time arrests for traffic offenses.

Once completed, the courthouse would probably hold night court once weekly, Quist said, but not on felony cases. Its holding cells, capable of detaining “160 people on a real busy day” would not be legally permitted to house prisoners overnight. And no prisoners would be released at the Chatsworth facility, he said, even if they were found not guilty there.

“I think if the courthouse is built we’ll prove to be good neighbors,” Quist said.

But Harvey Abram, who lives on nearby Penfield Avenue, warned that such a courthouse would send speeders and drunk drivers to court within three blocks of an elementary school.