Home Construction Rules Near Final Debate : Planning: After more than a year of meetings, city officials and community leaders from Mt. Washington and Glassell Park still have not agreed on a formula for limiting the size of new houses.

A three-year struggle to impose new hillside home-building rules in Mt. Washington and Glassell Park is nearing a none-too-harmonious conclusion.

After meeting for more than a year, a citizens advisory committee and city planners still disagree on the formula for limiting the size of houses that can be built on hillside lots.

In addition, some residents and owners of vacant property say the proposed rule would unfairly block new construction and encourage more public intrusions onto private property.

Such concerns were aired last week during a three-hour public hearing on the proposed Mt. Washington-Glassell Park Specific Plan. The comments will be used in preparing the final recommendations that will go to the Los Angeles City Planning Commission in about six weeks.

After the commission reviews the plan, the City Council is expected to vote on the new hillside building rules before the end of the year.

The tedious deliberations have taken a toll on the community volunteers who helped draft the new building limits.

“The committee has experienced a great deal of frustration getting to this point,” said Donald R. Bloss, chairman of the citizens advisory committee. “I don’t think anyone had any notion of what it entails to come up with a specific plan.”

The project originated about three years ago, when some Mt. Washington leaders became concerned that a home-building spree was harming the character of their scenic community. Under pressure from the residents, Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina instructed city planners to create new development and land-use rules for the hillside areas of Mt. Washington and Glassell Park.

“We were adamant about getting the City Council members to acknowledge that we need more help than the Los Angeles planning code can provide by itself,” said Louis Mraz, president of the Mt. Washington Assn., which represents about 400 households. “The biggest problem we have had is that developers are building very large houses on small or substandard lots.”

The specific plan would affect a 2.75-square-mile area that includes about 8,000 parcels zoned for single-family houses. About 30% of these lots are vacant, city planning officials said.

Under the proposed draft specific plan:

A new hillside house would face new size limits. The builder would also have to provide additional parking spaces and more setbacks--the open space between the house and the lot boundaries.

To encourage architectural diversity, a new house could not look like those surrounding it. Some community leaders have complained that look-alike row housing has begun to appear in the area.

Two “Scenic View Corridors” would be designated along portions of Mt. Washington Drive and San Rafael Avenue. New houses in these areas would face additional building restrictions, including increased side yards and landscaping limits.

Principal ridges and significant trees would receive greater protection.

One controversial provision would require builders to provide land for a pedestrian trails network. Some residents and developers have complained that these trails will intrude on homeowners’ privacy. The legality of this provision still must be reviewed by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, planning officials said.

New building restrictions would also apply in the commercial and multiple-family zones on more level areas surrounding the hills.

City planners and the advisory committee reached agreement on all portions of the specific plan except for the formula that limits the size and scale of a new hillside house.

Committee members believe that their plan would do a better job of preventing construction of houses that are out of scale with the neighborhood. They believe that city planners are supporting the other formula for the Mt. Washington area because it matches the one included in a proposed citywide hillside development law.

Gerald G. Gubatan, a city planner who worked with the advisory committee, acknowledged that his department was “looking for a methodology that would be consistent with the citywide approach.”

Gubatan said he is confident that the disagreement over the building formula will be resolved during the Planning Commission and City Council reviews.

But advisory committee chairman Bloss said he is disappointed that both formulas will be sent to city decision makers. “I thought it would be unfair to the community to have two different versions come out because it was the committee’s responsibility to come up with one recommendation and not offer a series of choices,” he said.

Despite the backing of the advisory committee, the plan faces some community opposition.

“These ordinances are so restrictive it would make it virtually impossible to develop even a single-family house,” said Patricia Terrazas, an architect who bought a vacant lot in Mt. Washington in 1986. “The existing code that was in effect was perfectly reasonable.”

Terrazas, who spoke against the specific plan at last week’s hearing, said that under the new rules, she could not build the three-bedroom house that she has designed for her 5,000-square foot lot.

Moira Adams, an urban planner and artist who lives on Mt. Washington Drive, has philosophical objections to the hillside building limits proposed by the advisory committee.

“Why should their personal taste dictate what their neighbors do on their private land?” she asked. “I think it’s un-American. I don’t really understand why we need a specific plan. How is this area more unique than Lincoln Heights?”

She questioned the need to curb development and preserve large areas of open space at a time when there is a severe shortage of affordable housing. Adams said the proposed Mt. Washington-Glassell Park specific plan is “part of an overall trend to require private landowners to maintain vacant land for semipublic use.”

Mraz, who also serves on the advisory committee, said new hillside building limits are opposed mainly by developers.

“People building their own houses would usually be comfortable with our limit,” he said. “But not the developer who needs that extra 500 to 600 square feet to get his extra $100,000 out of it.” Committee chairman Bloss said neither opposition nor fatigue will deter the group in the months of lobbying ahead as the long-awaited plan moves through the Planning Commission and the City Council.

“There are some people whose cynicism has overcome them,” he said. “But there’s still a core of dedicated members who are committed to see this through. After hundreds of hours of work, they’re not going to roll over and play dead.”