Planners Urge 20-Year Protection for Porter Ranch Plan : Development: In exchange for immunity from political shifts and new rules, the builder would finance public improvements designed to ease traffic.

The controversial blueprint for developing Porter Ranch adopted by the Los Angeles City Council last July should be immune for 20 years from changes, especially attempts by slow-growth advocates to limit its size, a city report advised Monday.

But in exchange for such insurance against political shifts and rule rewrites over the estimated construction life of the project, developer Nathan Shapell should pay for additional public improvements, most of them designed to ease traffic conditions in the northwest San Fernando Valley, the city Planning Department report advised.

Planning officials did not estimate the cost of the improvements they suggested.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the Porter Ranch area and was the prime sponsor of the Porter Ranch Specific Plan adopted by the council a year ago, was unable to comment because of a recent death in his family, an aide to the lawmaker said.

Walter Prince, a leader of the foes of the Porter Ranch project, said it would be a “bad mistake” to approve a 20-year agreement.

“It’s too damned long,” said Prince, who ran against Bernson in the April election. “You can’t foresee what will happen over that period. The city is already facing a drought, a trash crisis, sewage overflows--who knows what’ll be happening next” that would support arguments to limit the project, he said.

The city of Los Angeles has enacted only six development agreements in the past decade. Builders of large, multiphased construction projects usually seek such agreements out of fear that their land-use authorizations could be jeopardized by changing political fortunes and shifting council majorities.

Although such an agreement was initially proposed by the Porter Ranch Development Co., the version recommended by the city’s chief hearing examiner, Bob Rogers, and his deputy, Charles Rausch, contains new requirements that may be unacceptable to the company.

Porter Ranch spokesman Paul Clarke, who had not seen the city report but was informed of key changes proposed by the Rogers-Rausch team, said the company may refuse to accept the city version.

“It seems to me the city wants a blank check,” Clarke said of the proposal that the developer possibly be required to pay for the building of a large bridge over Aliso Canyon--located more than a mile from the project--as one expensive condition of securing the 20-year agreement.

The cost of such a bridge was recently estimated at $10.1 million, but the developer in his proposal had sought to cap his expenses for the bridge at $2 million.

The fate of the proposed agreement will eventually rest with the City Council. The lawmakers must ratify it, and they may also seek to renegotiate its terms.

A public hearing before the city’s Planning Commission, scheduled for July 25, is likely to reignite the often-strident debate about the Porter Ranch project, which nearly proved to be Bernson’s political undoing.

Largely because of his support for the huge project, Bernson, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, only narrowly won reelection on June 4 to a fourth term.

The Porter Ranch Specific Plan is a blueprint for developing more than 1,300 acres with up to 3,395 houses and 6 million square feet of commercial and retail space.

Under the development agreement, the plan would be exempt from changes for 20 years. Some city planning officials have previously expressed uneasiness over so long an agreement.

Frank Fielding, head of the unit that helped develop the plan, said Monday that he favored a 15-year agreement because of the difficulty of predicting the city’s future needs.

As it was proposed by the developer, the agreement asked the city to give “up too much to the applicant” and got “too little in return,” the report said.

However, with some changes, notably the Aliso Canyon bridge, the hearing examiners said they were able to “resolve these concerns.”

In another part of the report, the examiners appeared to belittle the importance of most of the 18 “additional benefits” the developer said the city would get by approving the agreement.

Mostly the developer was proposing “to accelerate funding of an improvement” that would already be required by the specific plan or through the normal subdivision approval process, the report said.

An example of this kind of concession was Shapell’s offer to build a two-mile stretch of Rinaldi Street before finishing construction of the 500th house in the project, Rausch said in an interview. The requirement to build that street would exist without the agreement, he said.

But when it would be built is important too, Porter Ranch spokesman Clarke said. Under the development agreement, it will be built sooner rather than later. Normally such street improvements might not be required until the developer actually proposed to build a housing tract--of which there are expected to be 26 in Porter Ranch--adjacent to the street.

“What the city is getting is the front-loading of some of the improvements” through the development agreement, Clarke said. “Under the agreement, the public gets the value out of the improvement now rather than in the year 2005 or 2010.”

Other “benefits” the city would get on an accelerated basis under the agreement:

* $500,000 to help pay for the construction of a Mason Street bridge over the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks near Plummer Street;

* $1,075,000 to pay for the installation of a “computer hub” that would be used to synchronize the traffic signals at more than 40 intersections, many of them in Chatsworth and some distance from the project.