Planners’ Insistence on Emergency Road May Block 21-House Project : Porter Ranch: The developer will appeal the ruling. He says it would require him to scale back his plan.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission ruled Thursday that a developer must provide a planned 21-house subdivision in Porter Ranch with an emergency road, which the developer said may force him to abandon the project.

Developer Ray Mulokas, saying he will appeal to the City Council, argued that he cannot comply with the order because the city Department of Water and Power will not allow him to build a paved road over its property along the southern edge of his planned project, the only possible route.

Mulokas had asked the commission for an exemption from an order by the city Fire Department. The department required the emergency access road because the project would be located on a dead-end road, accessible only from Corbin Avenue just south of the Simi Valley Freeway.

City public health and emergency regulations require a paved emergency access road be constructed for any project on a dead-end road longer than 700 feet. The private road for Mulokas’ project would be about 1,200 feet, planning officials said.

The only alternative for Mulokas is to build a smaller project with a road less than 700 feet long, planning officials said. That would make room for only about 10 houses, which Mulokas said would be too small a project to be profitable.

Gordon Hamilton, a senior city planner, said the commission has the authority to grant exemptions from city department requirements for a project, but rarely does so for public health or emergency requirements.

Mulokas was also denied a request for an exemption from a requirement that he install interior sprinklers in each of the houses for fire suppression because of the area’s remoteness from a fire station.

His one successful request was for permission to construct four-foot-high railings along the project’s equestrian trails of wood instead of galvanized pipe.

Mulokas said he hopes to build 4,000- to 6,000-square-foot houses on 20,000- to 40,000-square-foot lots. Although he would not estimate what his houses would eventually sell for, he said houses in the area currently sell for more than $500,000.

Although the project is included in the Specific Plan for the massive Porter Ranch project north of the Simi Valley Freeway, Mulokas said his project is being developed separately.

Walter Prince, leader of a homeowner group critical of the Porter Ranch project, argued unsuccessfully that Mulokas’ project was not meeting the Porter Ranch Specific Plan provisions, suggesting that a new environmental impact report was needed for Mulokas’ project.

The city planning staff told the commission, meeting in Van Nuys, that a new environmental report was not needed. However, the staff said that Prince was correct in arguing that the project should be required to participate in Porter Ranch’s composting program. Hamilton said the omission of that condition was an oversight.