Porter Ranch Proposal Has Planners Split : Development: Some want a 20-year agreement that the city not reduce the number of homes--3,395--allowed under the project’s Specific Plan.

A proposal by the Los Angeles Planning Department, binding the city for 20 years not to reduce development allowed under the controversial Porter Ranch Specific Plan, has split the City Hall planning staff.

Mid-level city managers such as Frank Fielding and T.K. Prime, both key players in drafting the Specific Plan, have said such a lengthy grant of immunity is too long.

But such a 20-year insurance policy was recommended by the Planning Department as a key feature of a proposed agreement between the city and Porter Ranch developer Nathan Shapell. The Specific Plan permits the construction of up to 3,395 residential units and 6 million square feet of commercial-office space.

The proposed agreement was outlined in a report released Monday by the Planning Department and signed by Bob Rogers, the department’s chief hearing examiner, and Charles Rausch, a hearing examiner.

Rogers said Tuesday that he was surprised to learn of Fielding and Prime’s reservations, saying he never heard them expressed as he and his staff reviewed the proposed development agreement.

“It’s news to me,” Rogers said. “And we talked about a lot of things in detail with them about the agreement.”

The report also reflects the “view of the department,” Rogers said. A draft was read by acting planning chief Melanie Fallon and by her deputy, Frank Eberhard. “The report represents our views, and no one in upper management objects to them,” Rogers said.

A half-dozen development agreements, sanctioned under state law, have been entered into by the Los Angeles City Council, all initiated by developers who have wanted their hard-won building authorizations contractually protected against shifting political tides at City Hall.

But for the pacts to comply with state law, the developers must also provide the city’s “additional considerations”--extra public improvements not already exacted through other land-use mechanisms.

Fielding said his concern stems from the difficulty of predicting what effects the Porter Ranch project’s early phases might have on the northwest San Fernando Valley--particularly on traffic--and how the effects of the project might interact with those of other construction in the area.

Fielding is head of the Valley-based Planning Department unit that drafted the Specific Plan, and Prime, a Department of Transportation supervisor, was responsible for the key analysis of the huge project’s traffic impacts.

Both men initially told The Times of their reservations last May. Fielding reiterated his concerns Monday, and Prime did the same Tuesday.

“Twenty years is stretching it out,” Fielding said this week. “It goes beyond my sense of reality. It’s the traffic that’s the biggest thing. I know just how much has changed in the past 20 years that we didn’t expect.”

Fielding said he would feel more “comfortable” with a 15-year agreement.

In return for a 20-year agreement, the city should have pressed the developer for greater concessions, Prime said. “In exchange for a 20-year agreement we should be getting more . . . from the transportation standpoint,” he said.

To begin with, the developer should pay for at least 25% of the cost of building the Aliso Canyon bridge--because that’s the proportion of bridge users who will come from the project, Prime said.

The development company offered to pay a maximum of $2 million toward the $10.1-million cost of the bridge, which will link the project and communities to the east, including Granada Hills and the Santa Clarita Valley.

The planning report--acknowledging that some city officials believed the developer’s $2-million offer was “totally inadequate”--recommended alternative language that left open the possibility that the city “may in the future” seek to assess the developer more than $2 million for the bridge.

This change was an improvement but still did not go far enough, Prime said. He said “$2.5 million should be the starting point.”

The city’s traffic study projected that the Porter Ranch Specific Plan development would generate more than 150,000 additional auto trips daily. But it also found that by 2010, overall street congestion would be somewhat better than it would otherwise be--even if no project were built--because of mitigation measures promised by the developer.

Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area, has declined to comment in detail on the proposed agreement, saying the recent death of his mother-in-law has prevented him from giving it more attention.

But, Bernson said, the agreement would not diminish the city’s ability to indirectly force reductions in the final amount of commercial-retail construction by requiring the developer to mitigate all traffic impacts of his individual commercial projects.

Such requirements could force the developer to scale down a project to avoid the high cost of mitigating its traffic impacts, he said.

NEXT STEP

A public hearing on the proposed agreement has been scheduled for July 25 at the Van Nuys Women’s Club by the Los Angeles Planning Commission. The commission may vote to approve the agreement recommended by its staff, craft a new version of its own or refuse to adopt any agreement. If the commission votes to disapprove the agreement, its decision cannot be appealed to the Los Angeles City Council. If it approves the agreement, in any form, the issue can be appealed to the council, which could then accept the decision or override it by a two-thirds vote.