Plan to Alter Landslide Building Ban Stymied : Rancho Palos Verdes: Raucous hearing and 2-2 Planning Commission vote reflect deep divisions.

Efforts to streamline and alter parts of the building moratorium in the landslide area of Rancho Palos Verdes were stymied at a raucous public hearing Tuesday night as the city Planning Commission deadlocked on whether to permit recreational development in the two-square-mile area.

Commissioners repeatedly voted 2 to 2, failing to agree on whether to approve the proposed changes and send them to the City Council or to study them further and rewrite them. Commissioner Charles Hotchkiss abstained from voting because he lives in the landslide area.

Faced with the deadlock, the commission adjourned after deciding to seek advice from City Atty. Carol Lynch on what its next step should be.

“We should have an answer in a day or two,” said City Manager Paul Bussey.

Tuesday’s stormy hearing and the split vote demonstrated the deep divisions in this affluent bedroom city over the fate of the moratorium, which currently outlaws all development in the slide area.

Hundreds of people jammed the meeting room in Hess Park, spilling into the hallway. Supporters included residents of the slide area who said that without the revisions they will never get financing to remodel and rebuild their damaged homes. Opponents, many of whom live outside the slide area, said weakening the moratorium would allow development that could trigger more slides.

At one point, commission Chairman Peter Von Hagen angrily suspended the hearing after twice warning the audience not to applaud or boo speakers. When many of the more than 300 people at the session booed in response to his warning and applauded the next speaker, he banged his gavel, suspended the hearing and moved it to the end of the agenda.

Von Hagen, who helped draft the changes and vigorously supports them, conducted other business for two hours, resuming the public debate at about 10 p.m.

Most of the changes are administrative fixes to get rid of ambiguities and inconsistencies in the ordinance, city officials said. For example, one section of the moratorium prohibits rebuilding a house that is more than 90% damaged, while another section allows replacing a building that is destroyed. The change will eliminate the prohibition.

The most controversial change would allow landowners in the moratorium area to develop golf courses or other open-space recreation if such developments do not add to landslide threats. City officials said they do not intend to weaken the moratorium or open the area to residential or commercial building.

“There is nothing here before us that lifts the moratorium or changes the boundaries,” Von Hagen told the packed hearing room in his opening remarks. Calling the 13-year-old moratorium “outdated in places,” he advocated sending the changes to the City Council.

The moratorium was applied to the two-square-mile area along Palos Verdes Drive South after the 1978 Abalone Cove landslide destroyed 45 homes. More than 200 homes have been damaged or destroyed by slow-moving landslides over the past 35 years.

In 1981, the city adopted a policy that allows developers to take land out of the moratorium if they can prove that the area they want to develop is geologically stable. One of the proposed changes would make that policy part of the moratorium ordinance, officials said.

No one at the hearing opposed the city’s efforts to eliminate the ordinance’s inconsistencies or to loosen restrictions on homeowners in the slide area who want to remodel or rebuild.

However, most opponents decried the golf course and recreation provision. This change “would permit substantial development and weaken the moratorium,” said Chris Manning, president of Peninsula Preservation, an advocacy group that wants to preserve the moratorium pretty much as is.

Other opponents contended that the commission was trying to rush the changes through before city elections Nov. 5, when three of the five council seats are up for grabs.

“We see this as another effort to fast-track an approval of a project without adequate time for public review,” said John Beringer, president of the Rancho Palos Verdes Council of Homeowners Assns.

Proponents included developers who say a carefully managed golf course would help stabilize the slide area. “We see no problem . . . with open-space recreational development in this area,” said Mike Mohler, speaking for Orange County developer Barry Hon, who has proposed building a 27-hole golf course and 25 homes in the area.

In the voting Tuesday, Commissioners Susan Brooks and Robert Katherman favored putting off any decision. Von Hagen and Commissioner Robert McNulty, who opposed that effort, were unsuccessful with their motion to send the changes to the council.