Residents’ Plan to Scale Back Hillside Tract May Backfire : Housing: Officials consider an alternative suggested by a group that really doesn’t want the project built at all.

The Glendale homeowners who have spent months using angry rhetoric to fight a hillside subdivision tried a new tactic last week--they redesigned the project themselves.

The Glenoaks Canyon Homeowners Assn. got help from building experts who live in the neighborhood in seeking to discredit developer Ken Doty, who wants to cut scenic ridgelines and destroy oak trees to build 25 houses off Sleepy Hollow Place.

The homeowners said their detailed maps and computer printouts proved that Doty was wrong when he said it was impossible to create a smaller project, which would cause less environmental damage.

But the strategy may have backfired. Although the association is on record as opposing any development on the Sleepy Hollow site, the City Council has seized upon the association’s 12-house plan as a possible compromise.

Dave Weaver, association president, said his group put together the 12-house plan only to show that the environmental impact study and Doty were incorrect in saying that only a 25-house subdivision is viable.

“It was a calculated gamble,” Weaver said. “All we were trying to do was prove that other alternatives could be found. We were not trying to say that this was the alternative we want built. If we had presented none and simply said that it could be done, it would have been a gamble as to whether the City Council would have believed it.”

At a hearing last Thursday, the council delayed a vote on Doty’s design while city planners evaluate the homeowners’ more modest building proposal. The project will be reviewed again Dec. 4.

“I’m going to have to take a second look at the 25 homes,” Mayor Larry Zarian said after Thursday’s meeting. “The people that put this thing together are very well-respected. It sheds a different light” on the proposed subdivision.

“I would have been prepared to take a vote” on Doty’s original proposal, Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg said. “But the homeowners themselves were the ones who presented the alternative. I think they probably introduced it as an example of what could have been done. But by introducing it, it became part of the evidence.”

The environmental report on Doty’s project said a smaller, 14-lot subdivision could be built. But it would require trucking almost 75,000 cubic yards of dirt through the neighborhood and into the canyon--a proposal that residents have strongly opposed.

Dick Kemp, a lifelong Glenoaks Canyon resident whose architectural firm has designed more than 300 school buildings, said he modified the plan presented in the EIR. By tucking 12 houses deeper into the canyon, no earth would need to be brought in and no ridgelines would be cut, he said.

Association leaders introduced Kemp to another canyon resident, developer Larry Russell, who was able to run computer programs that fine-tuned Kemp’s plan and proved that the smaller development would not require trucking in fill dirt.

Kemp acknowledged that houses built deeper in the canyon would have less impressive views and might sell for less money. Yet the architect claimed that Doty “should be able to make a handsome profit, even with 12 homes.”

But many of the 170 residents who attended last week’s hearing said they believe even one house would disrupt the scenic hillside area where deer and other wildlife are often spotted.

“I’d like to see no development,” said Richard B. Lewis, an amateur biologist who showed the council slides of the trees and wildflowers that flourish in the canyon. “It’s an outstanding wilderness area that is used extensively by local residents.”

Doty said Monday that he had not seen the association’s plan and declined to comment on it. “There’s no way to know what we’re going to do until we see it,” he said.

He speculated, however, that his subdivision might not work financially if he is allowed to build only 12 houses.

Several council members said they want fewer houses and less ridgeline damage than Doty originally proposed. But Councilman Jerold Milner said he thinks it is unrealistic to expect the council to block development of the site.

Milner said prohibiting development would undoubtedly trigger a lawsuit. In such cases, he said, the courts usually rule that a government body cannot take away legitimate property development rights.

Although the council plans to consider the homeowners’ proposed alternative, association leaders said they do not intend to help Doty or the city evaluate or modify the plan.

“The homeowners who continue to want no development would accuse us of selling out if we sit down and work out a plan with them,” Weaver said. “The burden of proof is now on somebody else.”