Conservancy Joins Fight to Raze Mulholland Wall : Santa Monica Mountains: The parks agency board votes to urge the city to revoke the permit for a 600-foot-long barrier around houses on scenic highway.

The effort to raze a 600-foot-long wall on Mulholland Drive that provides privacy for a bevy of celebrities gained a new ally this week when a state parks agency urged that it be torn down.

Critics say the wall--which neighbors and environmentalists have been trying to get rid of for more than a month--blocks the view from the road of West Los Angeles and the ocean, 13 miles away.

At a meeting Monday night of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy board, the conservancy’s executive director, Joseph T. Edmiston, warned that if the wall remains, Mulholland Drive will become like Pacific Coast Highway, “with its views ruined by development.”

By a 4-0 vote, the board subsequently urged the city of Los Angeles to revoke the permit it issued for the six-foot-high wall to be built for the North Beverly Park Estates luxury housing development.

The project, located south of Mulholland Drive between Coldwater Canyon Drive and Beverly Glen Boulevard, is home to rock singer Rod Stewart, Lakers star Magic Johnson, performer Pia Zadora and producers Jon Peters and Alan Ladd Jr.

The conservancy, which acquires land for state parks, has embarked on an aggressive program to buy property in the area of the development and owns 330 acres near the site.

However, a conservancy spokeswoman said the agency has no plans to take any further action to ask the Los Angeles Board of Public Works to revoke the permit it issued to build part of the wall on a city right of way.

“The resolution passed last night stands on its own,” she said.

Alan Kishbaugh, a leader of homeowners opposed to the wall and a member of the conservancy’s advisory committee, quoted developer Brian Adler as saying the wall is a key selling point for his still-incomplete project.

In a meeting Sept. 9 with the wall’s critics, “he said it was needed to provide security and privacy” to celebrity residents, Kishbaugh said.

Aides to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) also appeared at the conservancy meeting to announce that the legislators favor removal of the wall.

Meanwhile, some parties said Adler faxed them a compromise offer Monday.

But it got a cool reception before it got off the ground.

“It’s non-negotiable,” Kishbaugh said.

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the area and has been trying to broker a compromise, also was rebuffed Monday by the conservancy board.

Yaroslavsky had urged Edmiston and the conservancy board to postpone Monday’s scheduled vote on the wall issue in order to give Adler time to present his new plan.

But the conservancy’s advisory committee, meeting earlier Monday night, rejected that overture 9 to 0 and demanded that its parent board pass a resolution calling for immediate removal of the wall.

“I’ve never seen our advisory committee so upset and adamant,” said Carole Stevens, president of the conservancy board. “Passions were running high.”

As a result, the board rejected Yaroslavsky’s call for a delay before it even knew the contents of Adler’s latest offer.

Adler could not be reached for comment and a representative refused to comment Tuesday.

But Richard Reiss, chairman of a city advisory committee, said Tuesday that Adler had offered to remove the top four feet of the existing wall along a 300-foot-long stretch.

It would be replaced with a four-foot-high wrought iron fence atop the remaining two-foot-high wall.

The other 300 feet of the wall would remain.

“I think it’s fair,” said Reiss, chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Mulholland Scenic Parkway, an advisory body to the city’s Planning Department.

A year ago, Reiss’ committee recommended approval of the plan to build the wall, but earlier this month it voted 4 to 2 to ask that the wall be torn down.

The majority said the wall, as constructed, was not what they had expected when they approved it.

Reiss voted against the motion.