Activists in Uproar Over New Limits on Building : Mt. Washington: The city has revised the guidelines, dropping some of an advisory committee’s recommendations and revising others.

Mt. Washington activists who spent three years drafting new hillside home-building rules said they were angry this week that Los Angeles planners have discarded many of their ideas.

Community leaders said the planners’ latest version of the Mt. Washington-Glassell Park Specific Plan, unveiled late last week, undermines their bid to halt the construction of huge hillside houses.

“It’s a whole new plan,” said architect Louis Mraz, president of the Mt. Washington Assn. “It throws out things right and left.”

The Los Angeles Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the document today, but an aide to Councilman Richard Alatorre said he will ask for a postponement because of the community outcry.

Mraz serves on a citizens advisory committee that was formed in 1988 to help the city curb construction that threatened the scenic, semi-rural character of Mt. Washington and the hillside sections of Glassell Park. Committee members were appointed by Alatorre and former Councilwoman Gloria Molina when residents complained that large new hillside houses were out of scale with the neighborhood.

After many community meetings and bureaucratic battles, the advisory committee approved a package of building limits that were aired at a public hearing in January. Since then, however, city planners have prepared a new draft of the guidelines, dropping some of the advisory committee’s recommendations and revising others.

“They shot us down on everything of importance,” said Laurie Weir, a member of the committee.

The revised plan deletes the committee’s formula for limiting the size of new hillside houses in favor of new rules devised by a city planner. It eliminates the public walking trails endorsed by the committee and changes the definition of ridgeline areas that the panel sought to protect.

City planners also discarded the committee’s recommendation on how far from the street a hillside house must be built, then inserted their own rule. The planners dropped the committee’s guidelines for mixed apartment and commercial projects, saying a new city law makes them unnecessary.

Stunned community leaders set up meetings this week to analyze the new plan and prepare a response.

“We were astounded that they would send us a plan that varies so substantially from the citizens committee’s proposal,” said Clare Marter-Kenyon, first vice president of the Mt. Washington Assn. “It seemed to me to be a slap in the face to the citizens committee.”

But the revised guidelines received praise this week from Citizens for a Fair Specific Plan, representing property owners who believe that new, overly restrictive hillside building rules are not needed.

In a letter to city planning commissioners and council members, the group said: “This plan successfully balances the need for fairness with the need to guard against excessive development. The version previously recommended by the citizens advisory committee does not represent the views of the community at large.”

The letter states that the group is still concerned about the Scenic View Corridor provision, which would impose even stricter building rules on sections of Mt. Washington Drive and San Rafael Avenue. The letter suggests that the additional rules be applied throughout the plan area or be dropped altogether.

Moira Adams, a Fair Specific Plan member, said Wednesday that although the revised document is “a vast improvement” over the original, “we’re still not sure why there was a reason to do a specific plan in the first place. And we’re concerned about what it has cost so far.”

Diego Cardoso, Alatorre’s planning deputy, said he would ask the Planning Commission to delay its hearing on the Mt. Washington plan until July 18 to give community members time to conduct such reviews.

Alatorre has supported the advisory committee’s proposed building rules. Cardoso said he will ask why they were significantly altered. “We don’t know if the changes made by the Planning Department are the appropriate ones,” he said.

Robert Duenas, a city planner who prepared the revised Mt. Washington plan, defended his work Tuesday.

“I wouldn’t call it an overhaul at all,” he said in an interview. “Given the time and what I heard in the community, I felt this satisfies the intent of what the community wanted.”

He added that residents will have a chance to comment on the plan before it becomes law. “This is going to go before the Planning Commission and the full City Council, so it’s going to be worked on some more. There will be changes to this,” he said.

Duenas conducted the public hearing in January. He said he considered comments from that audience and subsequent letters when he revised the rules.

The advisory committee and the Planning Department submitted rival formulas aimed at limiting the size of new hillside houses, but Duenas rejected both. He endorsed a third formula that allows a builder to cover up to 40% of a lot and imposes a 45-foot height limit.

Duenas said the committee’s plan would have allowed more loopholes for a developer who wanted to add extra rooms to a hillside house.

But Mraz insisted that Duenas’ formula would allow larger hillside houses. He said his panel’s formula, based on a floor-area ratio, would permit no more than a 4,000-square-foot house on a 10,000-square-foot lot. But he said Duenas’ formula would allow a three-story, 12,000-square-foot house on the same lot.

Donald R. Bloss, chairman of the advisory committee, said some members, weary and frustrated by their three-year battle with the city bureaucracy, were almost ready to give up when they saw the latest revisions. But he said panel members have vowed to get their recommendations restored before the document is adopted.

“It would be real easy to say the snowball has grown so big and it’s so close to the bottom of the hill that I’ve got to get out of the way,” Bloss said. “Now we’re trying to push it back up the hill.”