Panel Delays Action on Warner Ridge

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission on Thursday delayed action on a staff report recommending that development on Warner Ridge not be limited to single-family houses.

The commission delayed action until Dec. 13 because the staff report, signed by Planning Department Director Ken Topping, was very hastily prepared and therefore technically inadequate, commission President Bill Luddy said.

But Luddy said he doubted that Topping would return with different advice in December. Topping, who did not attend the meeting, recommended against approval of a proposal advocated by Councilwoman Joy Picus, who wants no commercial development on the 21.5-acre site in Woodland Hills.

The Picus-backed revision would make the Warner Ridge community plan compatible with the zoning adopted by the council in January. The zoning calls for residential housing, but the current community plan permits commercial development.

Accompanying Topping’s recommendation was a supplemental environmental impact report estimating that only 65 houses could be built on the site if it were developed to the maximum under Picus’ plan and if the site were exempted from the city’s slope density formula--a provision designed to reduce the number of units that can be built on steeper lots. Without a slope density exemption, only 17 houses would be permitted, the report says.