Specific Plan for Ventura Boulevard Gets Tentative OK : Development: A councilwoman’s decision to withhold her vote delays final action, meaning that more projects could squeak by under the old rules.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday gave tentative approval to a sweeping set of building rules for Ventura Boulevard aimed at controlling development on the San Fernando Valley’s “Main Street” and generating the funds to cope with traffic.

Initiated five years ago in response to an intense building boom, the so-called Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan will affect all 17 miles of the commercial corridor north of the Santa Monica Mountains. It will govern the size, height and uses of buildings from Studio City to Woodland Hills, and was designed to revive the small, service-oriented businesses that have been lost to glitzy shopping centers and office buildings.

Described by officials as unprecedented in scope, the Specific Plan is expected to win final approval at the council’s Jan. 4 meeting. Proponents had hoped that it would be adopted Tuesday, but Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores’ decision to withhold her vote delayed final approval, prompting concerns that some new projects may be able to squeak in the door.

“It is a triumph, not only to the people along the corridor but to the whole city,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, who predicted that the plan may become a model for the city.

Slow-growth activists were less effusive, saying that in the five years it has taken to prepare the plan, the faces of their neighborhoods have changed and the quality of life has diminished, mainly because of large commercial projects and the resulting traffic.

“In Encino, we’ve had nothing but runaway development, and it really should never have been allowed to occur from Day 1,” said Kathy Lewis, vice president of the Encino Property Owners Assn. “I hope there’s some hope for the other communities and that they might learn by the disaster that occurred in ours.”

“My hair was black when it started,” Sherman Oaks resident Fred Kramer, who served on the plan’s citizens advisory committee, told the City Council. “Today, it’s gray. I urge you to pass this today before it turns white.”

The complicated ordinance addresses traffic, design and the environment, and cost the city about $600,000 in consultants’ fees, Principal City Planner Robert H. Sutton said. Its preparation began in early 1986 with a panel of City Council-appointed homeowners and developers, and it received Planning Commission approval in March.

Perhaps most significantly, the plan charges developers a fee for vehicle trips their projects will add to

the congested boulevard--money that the city will use to add traffic signals and widen streets. The “trip fees,” already in use in some Westside coastal communities, will vary among each of the boulevard’s five neighborhoods, ranging from $2,496 per added trip in Woodland Hills to $4,277 in Encino and Sherman Oaks. Trips are determined by counting cars that pass a certain point in an hour.

The plan also curtails development by placing a limit of 29,000 new car trips on the boulevard, now the site of 70,000 car trips per day. But if 12 crucial intersections are found to be seriously congested when 14,000 new car trips have been added, even stricter building controls will take effect.

Building heights will generally be limited to two and three stories, although the City Council exempted four projects from the plan. These include two 13-story office towers and one 10-story building planned for Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards in Woodland Hills, and a 335,000-square-foot office building at Ventura Boulevard and Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino. Developers of those projects worked out prior agreements with the city.

One project that was denied an exemption--a controversial office and retail complex in Sherman Oaks--may have indirectly prevented the Specific Plan from receiving final adoption Tuesday. The project, which could be three stories under existing rules but only two under the Specific Plan, is the focus of a neighborhood battle.

Benjamin M. Reznik, attorney for developer Jacky Gamliel, argued that his client deserved an exemption because Gamliel was on the verge of obtaining his building permits after 18 months of city review. Although Reznik failed to win an exemption, Flores and Councilman Robert Farrell said that they were concerned about builders with projects nearing approval and that it was unfair to subject them to a new set of rules.

When the Specific Plan came up for a vote, Flores took the unusual step of withholding her ballot, thus preventing the ordinance from winning immediate adoption with the needed approval of 12 members. Tuesday’s vote was 11 to 0.

The same thing happened to an ordinance proposed by Councilman Michael Woo that would strictly limit building permits on the boulevard for as much as six months. Woo called for the modified building moratorium to give city officials a chance to study and implement the new Specific Plan. Despite the delay, the proposal is expected to win adoption Jan. 4.

What remains unclear is whether Woo’s building freeze will take effect immediately upon adoption Jan. 4 or a month later, when the Specific Plan goes into effect.

Homeowners were disappointed when Flores and Councilman Ernani Bernardi voted against a plan by Woo that would have made the freeze effective immediately--again forcing the issue to be decided Jan. 4.

“It seems that Joan Milke Flores has jeopardized a lot of neighborhoods along Ventura Boulevard. We can now expect a rash of building permits to be requested before Jan. 4,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “One person can do a lot of damage.”