San Pedro’s Future to Be Resolved by Zoning Plan : Land use: Public hearing is set this week on city planners’ proposal to limit growth. A citizens advisory panel urges even tighter restrictions.

For Vladimir Funcich, a retired shipping clerk who moved to San Pedro with his family 47 years ago today, the future of the community hinges on a fairly basic notion.

“San Pedro is not a town you go through,” Funcich, 61, says. “It is a town you go to.”

As such, the longtime resident of Patton Avenue says, Los Angeles’ southernmost community cannot allow more and more development to choke its already crowded thoroughfares, such as Gaffey Street and Western Avenue. If it does, Funcich says, the charm of San Pedro, the small-town flavor that brought families like his to the community decades ago, will be lost forever.

“It’s hard enough to get around as it is,” he says.

This week, Funcich and other San Pedro residents will get a chance to debate the future development of the community when the Los Angeles City Planning Department holds a public hearing on new proposals to rezone San Pedro for the first time since 1986, when a state law forced planners to re-examine zoning and community plans throughout Los Angeles.

The San Pedro hearing, scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday at Los Angeles Harbor Department headquarters, follows more than three years of study by community members and city planners on how to control the growth that came in a wave of condominium and apartment construction in the 1980s.

The building boom caused San Pedro’s population to swell from just over 62,000 in 1980 to about 80,000 today. And until interim controls on new construction slowed that growth in 1989, the zoning would have permitted the community’s population to reach 103,000.

Now, city officials are poised to consider new zoning and other development guidelines for San Pedro that would effectively limit its population to 90,000 under a plan developed by a 25-member citizens panel. A separate set of recommendations by city planners would allow slightly more development, though no population estimates have been made.

Both proposals, which include height limits and other building restrictions, stem from the appointment in March, 1989, of the advisory panel to examine San Pedro’s development and recommend ways of controlling future growth. The committee was named by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

The committee’s findings, issued last June, were then passed on to city planners, who last month developed their own list of recommendations.

Generally, the committee members and city planners agreed that single-family neighborhoods should remain zoned for only single-family housing and that the amount of building allowed in other residential and commercial areas be kept at current levels or reduced.

If that approach is eventually approved by lawmakers at City Hall, San Pedro’s zoning would be restrictive enough to limit the community’s future population to about 90,000 residents, only 10,000 above its current population and 13,000 fewer than could be accommodated under the current building densities allowed in residential neighborhoods.

Nevertheless, there are some significant disagreements between the citizens committee and city planners on how to rezone specific neighborhoods and impose other conditions on development, such as height limits, property setbacks and landscaping.

One major area of disagreement, for example, is Old San Pedro, the downtown waterfront neighborhood for which many committee members and homeowner groups have called for lower-density zoning and other development restrictions seen as unwarranted or unworkable by city planners.

Under the plan developed by the citizens committee, that neighborhood, between 9th and 22nd streets and Beacon Street and Pacific Avenue, would be rezoned RD2 to permit only one dwelling unit for every 2,000 square feet of building space, compared to the current RD1.5 zoning that allows one unit for every 1,500 square feet. The typical lot in many San Pedro neighborhoods is about 6,000 square feet.

In addition, committee members have urged not only that Old San Pedro be subject to other restrictions on development but that the area--dotted with older California Craftsman-style homes and so-called fishermen’s cottages--be designated a historically significant neighborhood to limit the demolition of existing housing.

“We are very concerned about (retaining) the historical component,” said Jerry Gaines, a committee member and president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition.

City planners said their recommendations would impose more restrictive zoning than now exists in the area. But although the area includes a smattering of older homes, city planners said, any move for historical designation of Old San Pedro must be taken up with the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, not city planners.

In another disagreement, Gaines and many other committee members are concerned that the Planning Department recommendations would not be restrictive enough on new multifamily developments in other neighborhoods, where apartments or condominiums now prevail. Those neighborhoods include Point Fermin, a quiet, picturesque enclave that has the feel of a single-family neighborhood despite a growing number of multifamily developments.

In such areas, city planners have recommended that the prevalent development on a block should determine its future zoning. For instance, they said, if one side of a street has four single-family homes and five multiunit buildings, it should be zoned for multiunit development.

However, the committee would limit future building on such blocks to single-family homes, preventing another wave of multiunit development. Doing so, they said, would preserve current densities, avoid additional traffic, and help maintain what’s left of the San Pedro’s small-town character.

“There are some really beautiful homes there . . . and we wanted to allow some development but don’t want it totally wrecked and ruined by” new apartments and condominiums, said Shanaz Ardehali-Kordich, a committee member and co-founder of the San Pedro Downzoning Committee, a group that helped spearhead the current rezoning of the community.

Despite such differences, city planners say their proposal varies only slightly from those offered by the citizens advisory committee. “I’d say we agreed in about 85% of the cases on what should be done,” said planner Thomas Glick.

Added Gurdon Miller, senior planner for the study: “Generally speaking, what we have tried to do is come up with a set of recommendations for the Planning Commission that balances the desires of citizens to reduce densities against the needs for the community to provide adequate commercial use and residential densities.”

In that regard, they said, their rezoning proposal and other guidelines for development will allow San Pedro to grow, but not without limits and certainly not as it did during the 1980s. Their plan, Miller said, “is not dramatic . . . is not painless, but it is reasonable and reasoned. And it is intended to serve the long-term needs of the community.”

But in the view of Gaines, Ardehali-Kordich and many others, the only way to serve San Pedro in the long term is to place much stricter limits on development than city planners are now willing to embrace. And doing that, they said, will mean persuading residents to share their vision of San Pedro’s future.

“The committee can say whatever it wants, but I would like to see a whole lot more community involvement in this,” said Ardehali-Kordich. “I’d like to see the people come to the hearings and say, ‘Hey, this is our area. This is what we want. We want to control the destiny of our neighborhoods.’ ”

NEXT STEP

After Thursday’s public hearing on the proposed rezoning of San Pedro, a city planner will issue a report with recommendations to the Planning Commission. The commission will then hold a public hearing on the report and issue its own findings to the City Council. The council will also hold a hearing before acting on the proposed zone changes, which must be approved by Mayor Tom Bradley. Barring major revisions in the zoning now proposed for San Pedro, city planners expect the entire process, including action by the mayor, to be completed by year’s end.

The public hearing on San Pedro rezoning proposals will be at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Los Angeles Harbor Department. Copies of the proposed zone changes and other development restrictions are available for review at the San Pedro Regional Library, 931 S. Gaffey St., and the San Pedro Municipal Building, 638 S. Beacon St.