A Smaller Farmers Market Plan? : Redevelopment: Owners of the popular tourist attraction are willing to scale back their proposal for a shopping center, but their reductions still fall short of the cuts recommended by a city task force.

Faced with the prospect of widespread community opposition, the developers of a proposed regional shopping center at the famed Farmers Market on Fairfax Avenue are exploring ways to scale down their plans, sources familiar with the project said this week.

In a series of informal contacts with elected officials and local homeowner groups, Farmers Market owner A. F. Gilmore Co. has been attempting to determine how much the center would have to be reduced from the 2 million square feet originally planned to make it acceptable to its neighbors and city government.

But despite Gilmore’s efforts, opponents warned of a legal battle if the Los Angeles City Council approves a regional shopping center for the traffic-clogged Fairfax District.

In its effort to slim down the project, Gilmore is expected to go with two major department stores instead of three as originally planned, the sources said. Nordstrom and May Co. would stay; Robinson’s would be out.

Gilmore and its partner, JMB Urban Investment & Development Co., may also be willing to give up the idea of building a 600-room hotel at the Farmers Market, one of Los Angeles’ most popular tourist attractions.

The changes tentatively contemplated could amount to a 30% reduction in the size of the project, but they would still fall short of the drastic cuts recommended earlier this year by a design team appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley.

The Gilmore Co. has wanted to develop the Farmers Market for years, but the expected release of an environmental impact report this week will start the city planning process needed for the project to go ahead.

Sources familiar with the report say it concludes that the shopping center, if constructed properly, can actually help reduce one serious problem in the neighborhood--the danger of explosion posed by the presence of underground pockets of methane.

However, the document also concludes that a 2-million-square-foot shopping center would generate several thousand additional car trips at rush hour each weekday, and that there is no way to mitigate the impact of the added traffic on several key intersections.

Once the report is made public, a hearing can be scheduled where planning officials will begin their review of Gilmore’s requests for a zone change and other permits needed to go ahead with the project. The hearing is now expected to be set for late September or October.

Many speakers will want to be heard, but the recommendations of City Councilman John Ferraro, whose district includes the site, are expected to carry the most weight.

Rene Weitzer, the councilman’s planning aide, said that Ferraro has not yet formulated a position on the Farmers Market proposal or other major developments nearby.

But community activists expect him to urge a smaller project than originally proposed. How much smaller remains to be seen.

“They’re playing it very close to the vest,” said Harald R. Hahn, president of the Burton Way Homeowners Assn. “John Ferraro is very close to the Gilmore people, but he has a sense of what’s good for his district.

“He’s not going to deny them (Gilmore), but he wants to avoid a major fight that could be bloody. . . . and the impact (of overdevelopment) would be so horrendous it would be worth whatever blood was expended,” he said.

Ferraro’s opinion is eagerly awaited because it would resonate beyond the boundaries of the Gilmore tract.

Owners of the Park Labrea apartment complex also want to expand only a few blocks away, and other developers have their eyes on parcels at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

“You can’t consider these in isolation,” said Lisa Foster, a land-use attorney who is a member of Committee to Preserve Fairfax, a group that has spoken out against large-scale development in the area.

“What often happens is that one project goes through and is scaled back or whatever, and then up comes (someone like) Park Labrea and they say it’s our property right to develop our property, and the fact that you have gobbled up all the traffic capacity has not in the past stopped other projects,” she said. “It happens downtown every day.”

Joan Kraden, a spokeswoman for Forest City Development, which operates Park Labrea, said the company’s plans to build more than 2,000 rental units and an office complex are still being reviewed for environmental impacts. A draft report is expected soon, she said.

“We from the beginning have said that these two projects (Farmers Market and Park Labrea) should be considered in the same time frame. Now it’s up to the city,” she said.

Although Ferraro represents just one vote on the 15-member body, his district includes all the proposed developments and he serves as City Council president, which gives him extra clout.

“I think it’s a safe bet that (Ferraro) will carry eight votes for almost whatever he wants,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents a neighboring district.

Yaroslavsky said he likes the proposal by the mayoral task force for a locally oriented shopping mall that would occupy one-tenth of the space proposed by Gilmore and its partner. Anything bigger than one department store would “imprison that community in a wall of traffic,” Yaroslavsky said.

Although the ideas of the task force carry no legal weight, community activists, city officials and developers all agreed that its report will have an impact on the planning process.

To prepare for the environmental hearing on the Farmers Market proposal, the leaders of several residents groups met last month in an effort to come up with a common approach.

“We sense that there is room on all sides for discussion,” said David Hamlin, president of the Park Labrea Tenants Assn., which represents many of the 10,000 residents of the city’s largest apartment complex.

But Norman Elkin, vice president of JMB Urban, said that a shopping center with just one department store anchor and a handful of smaller retail businesses would not be economically viable.

“The anchors won’t agree with it and the merchants won’t sign up, because it won’t stand up to the competition,” he said.

Elkin, whose company is one of the largest commercial developers in the country, said he was aware of community concerns.

He was especially sensitive to comparisons with the Beverly Center, a hulking, 900,000-square-foot indoor shopping mall that dominates the skyline one mile west of the Farmers Market.

“We’re being tagged like the second Beverly Center, and we’re not. We’re going to be different,” he said. “Everybody’s going to have to compromise.”

Despite the environmental report’s gloomy forecast of traffic in the area, state law permits a local government to nonetheless allow a project such as Farmers Market to be built by declaring that its economic benefits override environmental concerns. Such a declaration, however, can open the way for legal challenges.

“We’ve said all along the traffic will be impossible,” said Diana Plotkin, president of the Beverly-Wilshire Homeowners Assn. “If the city finds overriding (economic) benefits, they’d have to prove it to a judge if somebody challenged it.”

Complicating the situation is the fact that the city’s overall land-use plans for the Fairfax area have not been revised since the 1970s. In the absence of an up-to-date planning scheme for the area, the findings of Bradley’s task force “would certainly support any legal action,” Plotkin said.

Indeed, Deborah Murphy, the mayor’s urban design adviser, said she expects to press the panel’s recommendations on the developer throughout the planning process, and beyond to the courts if necessary.

“We’ve already asked Farmers Market to seriously consider looking in that direction, to reducing the size and traffic and looking at the urban design issues,” she said.