Panel Blocks Nightclub Expansion Plans : Sepulveda: A zoning board is told that the bar is in a high-crime area. ‘The block is a nightmare,’ police say.

A Los Angeles city zoning panel Tuesday vetoed a request to expand a Sepulveda nightclub by almost 50%, after police vice officers testified that the expansion would increase the already rampant criminal activity in the area.

“This one block is a nightmare,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. Ken Kreider told the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals as the panel heard the expansion request from the owners of Las Brisas, in the 15300 block of Parthenia Avenue.

The nightclub, which has a permit from the city to operate a bar and dance club with live music for a maximum of 175 people, is one of 12 bars in the area that cater mostly to Latino working-class patrons.

The club’s request for a permit to serve 250 patrons by adding a 950-square-foot annex to its existing 3,400-square-foot facility was rejected on a 4-0 vote.

Board Chairwoman Ilene Olansky said her decision did not reflect on Las Brisas or its proprietor but on the overall saturation of the area with bars. “To add 75 more people to an area already rife” with bars would be a “disservice,” Olansky said.

Las Brisas adjoins a residential neighborhood along the San Diego Freeway that has been the site of such widespread drug-dealing that the city barricaded some of the streets to end the sale of narcotics to motorists by sellers operating from the sidewalks.

The nightclub is in the Devonshire Division’s highest crime area, the board was told by Daniel Green, city zoning administrator.

Police Department records show that 188 arrests for prostitution and 535 arrests for drug-related crimes were made in 1990 in the roughly two-square-mile crime-reporting district in which Las Brisas is located. The district registered 2,585 serious crimes last year, compared with an average of 345 for the division’s 74 such districts.

The board also was dissatisfied with the failure of the club’s owner, Luis Flores of Sylmar, to show how 250 patrons could be accommodated by the 44 parking spaces.

The debate between the owner’s representatives and the board was testy at times over the question of bias.

At one point, Andreas Birgel, attorney for the applicant, told the board that “you can’t pick on a place because it primarily services Mexican-Americans.” Olansky retorted that it was Birgel who raised the issue, and that the board was not acting from prejudice.

Club manager Carlos Guzman also contended that police and state liquor-licensing authorities have inspected the nightclub three times in the past month, compared with once-a-year visits in the past.

But appeals board member Valeria Velasco told Guzman that the same standards were being applied to Las Brisas as to other applicants. Kreider told the panel that “this bar was not picked on because it was Hispanic” or because it had an application to expand.