Rebuilding Plan for Downtown Torrance Is OKd : Development: After an emotional hearing, the council approves a long-debated revitalization project that the Planning Commission had rejected.

A long-debated project to rebuild part of Torrance’s Old Downtown sailed through the City Council Tuesday with a resounding 6-0 vote of support.

Two dozen people addressed the council before the vote, about half praising the $35-million project and others calling it too large and crowded for the neighborhood of aging stucco storefronts.

Several critics left the meeting before the late-night vote, saying they thought council members already had made up their minds.

“I think they’ve just decided they want this project,” said downtown resident Karen Robinson as she left City Hall. She added that she believes the architectural design is too dense.

“It looks like Santa Monica, and I don’t think it belongs in that little area,” Robinson said.

Her comments were echoed by Leila Turner, a Torrance resident since 1925, who said she fears that downtown will lose its historic significance if the project is built.

“You start something like that, and the whole town goes. It will be all condos,” Turner said after the meeting.

But others championed the plan for new condominiums and retail space as the best chance to reverse what they characterized as a pattern of downtown deterioration.

“I am strongly in favor of this project, because I think it’s going to revitalize the area,” said Joel McCloud, president of the Downtown Torrance Assn.

The plans from Gascon Mar Ltd. and Sam Levy Investment Partnership call for 179 new condominiums, 28,000 square feet of retail space and 529 parking spaces in surface and underground lots. The project will include three sections totaling 3.5 acres of the downtown area.

The city Planning Commission dealt a blow to the project Feb. 6 when it voted 6 to 0 against granting a permit. Commissioners said they feared it was too dense a development for the area.

But City Council members clearly felt otherwise. They approved the Gascon Mar/Levy plans in concept on Tuesday, subject to formalizing certain conditions.

Mayor Katy Geissert said Wednesday that she thinks the Planning Commission looks at a project from “purely the planning and standards and codes point of view,” while the council has more wide-ranging responsibilities.

She added: “I think the council, because of this broader charge, is looking at an expansive project from a broader perspective, taking into consideration what the future of the area might be.”

Planning Commission Chairman Frank Rizzardi said he still believes the developers should have altered the project and reduced the number of condominiums.

But the commission’s role is purely advisory, Rizzardi said.

“(The council) can either take our advice or come up with their own decisions. . . . If that’s what they want to do, fine,” he said.

The speakers’ strong emotions imbued the evening with an air of high drama.

Minutes before the vote, tension mounted when Councilman Dan Walker alleged that John C. Geyer, the most visible project critic and owner of MCB Paint & Decorating Center in Old Downtown, has been trying to sell his Marcelina Avenue property to the developer.

That remark brought Geyer’s sister, Patina Bush to her feet. She yelled at Walker, calling his comments unfair, then strode out of the council chambers into the City Hall lobby. There, she reportedly made a comment within earshot of a police officer, indicating “that she wanted to punch (Walker) in the nose,” Torrance Police Sgt. Ron Traber said Wednesday.

A police report was filed on the incident because it involved a threat to a public official, but the city has no plans to prosecute, Traber said.

Geyer said Wednesday that his real estate agent had talked to Gascon Mar Ltd. in the last several months about selling his paint store and the property on which it stands.

“This was like a one-, two- or three-phone call type of deal,” Geyer said. He denied that the negotiations contradicted his claims that the project would hurt downtown. “I don’t want to be the last one here when the lights (go) out,” Geyer said.

Geyer said the talks were initiated by Alan M. Schwartz, managing partner of Sam Levy Investment. But Schwartz said after Tuesday’s meeting that Geyer’s real estate agent had introduced the idea of Geyer selling the land “out of left field” at the end of January.

Several speakers at the meeting questioned if the project would increase city water use at a time when Southern California is suffering a severe drought.

Torrance resident Turner asked if a city water shortage would be worsened by “all those people flushing their toilets” in the new condominiums.

But Geissert told her that since the project is replacing some residential units, “We have people flushing toilets down there now.”

And city officials pointed to a Tuesday memorandum from William G. Heisner, city water utility director, saying the condominiums could increase city water usage by about 8,500 to 11,500 billing units, an amount he described as one-tenth of 1% of total water usage in the municipal water area.

City Council members were acting Tuesday as both the City Council and the city Redevelopment Agency.

Members delayed acting on some project conditions until March 19 because of lingering questions about whether the height of one condominium building could be lowered and whether El Prado Avenue should be made one-way between Cravens and Sartori avenues.

They also had questions about the status of arrangements for relocating the Torrance Super Market and Torrance Community Theatre into new quarters in the project.

Allan W. Ruppar, president of the theater’s board of directors, cautioned council members Tuesday night that his group was still negotiating terms with the developers for moving to space on the second floor of the project’s retail plaza. The move is still tentative, he told them.

Buildings that house both the theater and the market are to be torn down to make way for the project.

Gascon Mar partner Allan Mackenzie said Wednesday that the developers have agreed to pay for a new Torrance police substation on Sartori Avenue as part of the project.

The department currently has only one substation, at the Del Amo Fashion Center.

Construction costs for the new substation--which would be 1,000 to 2,000 square feet--are estimated at $100,000, Mackenzie said. The developers are also prepared to pay up to $40,000 annually toward the substation’s operating expenses “for a considerable period of time,” Mackenzie said.

“We would like to see a police station down there. We think it would be good for everyone,” he said.

But one project critic, Mario Acuna, told the council, “That police station is nothing more than payola.”