L.A. Planning Dept.--a Passive Role? : Development: City Council members wield the real power in deciding whether and how much to build. The city agency handles routine matters and often stays in the shadows.

Porter Ranch, Playa Vista and the Farmers Market--these are three of the largest parcels of undeveloped land in the city of Los Angeles. But they are not destined to stay empty long.

Builders have big plans for the 1,300 acres of the Porter Ranch project near Chatsworth, the 670 acres of marshy lowlands of Playa Vista near Marina del Rey and the 31 acres encircling the Farmers Market in the heart of the Fairfax District.

In the end, the offices, shopping complexes and residences that will rise on those parcels will say as much about the passivity of the city Planning Department as they will about growth in Los Angeles.

The Planning Department has had little input on what will be built on those locations, except to supervise the preparation of environmental impact reports by developer-hired consultants.

It was City Council members who made the big deals, not the city’s professional planners whose responsibility for the bureaucratic minutia of tract map and zoning changes often overwhelms the department.

“I would not go into a project under any circumstances without the support of the local councilperson,” said Los Angeles developer Jerome Snyder, who recently worked out a compromise with Councilwoman Ruth Galanter that led to swift approval of his $400-million Channel Gateway project in Venice.

Political observers point to the Farmers Market project as an illustration of how, when the Planning Department does enter the process, it sometimes does so after critical decisions have been made by others.

“L.A. is planning by politics, not planning by anything else. This particular (Farmers Market) project is a good example,” said one development industry insider. “They could have come up with real alternatives, impacts, pros and cons, tried to lead the debate. . . . They didn’t take that opportunity.”

Heirs of the pioneering Gilmore family said for years they wanted to build three department stores, dozens of shops, numerous movie theaters, a hotel and 150 apartments around the Farmers Market.

Four years after the project was officially proposed, the Planning Department finally made a recommendation--against building anything at all or, at least, for changing the project from a shopping center to an office complex.

The planners’ recommendation came as Councilman John Ferraro decided that a smaller version of the development would be acceptable. Officials who are close to the process say Ferraro’s vision of a scaled-down shopping center will eventually win out.

Hank Hilty, president of the Gilmore Co., said he met with Planning Director Kenneth C. Topping, who resigned last week, and with Cal Hamilton, Topping’s predecessor, early in the process.

“Basically, we bounced ideas off of them and tried to explain to them where we were headed. They never suggested that we should take one direction or another,” he said.

The Planning Department also played a secondary role in the Porter Ranch project, which was shepherded by Councilman Hal Bernson, and the Playa Vista plan, being ushered through the system by Councilwoman Galanter.

In the case of Porter Ranch, developer Nathan Shapell first wanted to build a mini-city with 3,395 residential units and 9 million square feet of offices and commercial development.

But his vision had shrunk by a third by the time the City Council approved it in July, after challenges from a citizens’ advisory group, which Bernson appointed, and from the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which Bernson chairs.

Then Mayor Tom Bradley threatened a veto unless Porter Ranch included more affordable housing, mass transit alternatives and a greater sensitivity to recycling.

After some final tinkering, and an endorsement from Topping, the project went ahead.

Playa Vista, once the dream of Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp., originally sailed through the planning process, but then became stymied for eight years by an environmentalist lawsuit that sought to preserve the Ballona Wetlands. The wetlands is home to nearly 200 kinds of birds, including several endangered species.

Last year, control of the property transferred from Summa Corp. to Maguire Thomas Partners, a politically well-connected development firm that built the First Interstate World Center, the tallest building on the West Coast, in downtown Los Angeles.

But before Maguire Thomas bought into the Playa Vista project, top executives of the Santa Monica firm met extensively with Galanter in an effort to learn what it would take to get approval for the project.

They then met with local groups and drastically revised Summa’s plans, eliminating high-rise office towers and massive shopping centers to make way for a project that is still immense by any standard: 5 million square feet of office space, 11,750 residential units, 720,000 square feet of retail space, 2,400 hotel rooms, 2,500 parking spaces and a marina with 750 slips.

“It is critical in our view to go to regulators, public policy people, elected officials and the community to learn what they are interested in . . . and to try to get a consensus plan early in the process,” said senior partner Nelson C. Rising.

Throughout that process, Rising said, he has kept the Planning Department informed, even before formal plans had been submitted for processing.

The low-keyed role of the Planning Department may “seem funny to lay people and citizens because they feel the Planning Department should be out there planning,” said Allan J. Abshez, an attorney representing the Farmers Market developers.

But once the Planning Department establishes zoning and other overall guidelines for development, “They consciously try to stand back,” he said.

“It’s in keeping with the concept that a property owner should, subject to reasonable regulation, be allowed to do what they’d like to do with their property. . . . The property owner generally will have a better sense of what the market needs, and what the community needs.”

Many homeowner representatives disagree, saying that a strong Planning Department is needed to stand up to developers and their allies on the City Council.

“In the Farmers Market hearing, the Planning Department came up with a recommendation of no new development. Did anyone listen to what they’re saying? Nobody,” said Diana Plotkin, president of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Assn. “They can’t even do a good job even if they want to.”