Ventura Blvd. Plan OK Caps a 5-Year Fight : Growth limits: A developer threatens to sue and a homeowner group president accuses Councilman Marvin Braude of selling out.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved a sweeping plan to limit future commercial projects on a 17-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard and impose tens of millions of dollars in fees on developers to cope with the traffic their projects bring.

The 13-0 vote on the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan was the crowning achievement of a five-year campaign to control growth along the thoroughfare, sometimes called the “main street” of the San Fernando Valley.

The plan enacts controls on the size, height and uses of buildings along the boulevard from Woodland Hills to Studio City.

Supporters say the plan will block the kind of office tower developments in parts of Encino and Sherman Oaks that have changed much of the boulevard’s small-town ambience and encourage pedestrian-oriented uses.

“It’s been a long time coming, and at last we have a plan that’s meaningful and significant,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the Encino area.

The plan would permit up to 8 million square feet of additional commercial development along the boulevard, which already has 17 million square feet. By another measure, the plan would permit 30,000 additional peak-hour auto trips along the boulevard, where there are now 70,000.

Without the plan, uncontrolled growth would bury the boulevard in traffic, the plan’s sponsors said. With it, commercial developers and existing property owners will foot the bill for traffic improvements that will keep the boulevard’s auto congestion--even with more cars and development--at current levels.

Fees charged commercial property owners under the plan are to pay to widen the streets, develop left-turn lanes and install traffic signals to mitigate the impacts of new growth.

But the current building recession has prompted some real estate experts to question whether the plan is not superfluous because the falling economy is already slowing the kind of growth that occurred during the mid-to-late 1980s along the strip.

But not everyone was pleased with Friday’s results. Developer Jacky Gamliel plans to sue to overturn a provision in the plan that appeared to cripple a controversial $25-million project he plans at the corner of Woodman Avenue, said Gamliel’s attorney, Benjamin Reznik.

And Gerald Silver, president of the Homeowners of Encino, bitterly attacked an exemption for a project planned by developer Jona Goldrich as a “sellout” by Braude, who sponsored the exemption.

The waiver will permit Goldrich to build a project with 335,000 square feet of net rentable space at the corner of Hayvenhurst and Ventura. In return for being permitted to build a project larger than the plan allowed, Goldrich accepted a three-story height limit on his project, a ban on theaters at the site and a limit of one full-service restaurant.

A key piece of the plan--an ordinance to create a benefit assessment district that would result in traffic mitigation fees being imposed on existing commercial property owners, not just developers of new projects--has not yet been approved by the council.

Bob Sutton, a top Planning Department official, said Friday it may be six months before the assessment district ordinance is ready for council review.

Originally, it was envisioned that imposing fees on new developers alone would suffice to pay for the traffic improvements. But last March a study concluded that only a tax on all boulevard property owners could generate the $200 million needed to fund street improvements.

A series of last-minute amendments Friday drew fire from both homeowner activists and developers.

Reznik, who represents many developers along the strip, predicted Friday his client Gamliel would sue to block the plan. Reznik said an urgency clause provision approved Friday, at the request of Councilman Michael Woo, will block Gamliel from starting work on his $25-million commercial project at the corner of Woodman Avenue and Ventura Boulevard.

Reznik said Gamliel is only a few days away from obtaining a building permit to begin construction and that the Woo-backed urgency clause was designed solely to block Gamliel’s project.

Woo has labored hard to stop the project but denied that the urgency clause feature was aimed at Gamliel.

“It’d be ironic if Woo’s urgency clause were to result in a lawsuit that blocks the entire plan,” Reznik warned.

Meanwhile, Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, blasted the council for granting an exemption to an Encino project proposed by developer Goldrich. “It’s a sellout,” Silver said of a last-minute agreement between Goldrich and Braude’s office that allows the developer to build a 335,000-square-foot commercial complex at the corner of Hayvenhurst Avenue.