Picus Pushes Warner Ridge Appeal Talks

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus on Friday asked the council to hold a closed-door session Tuesday to discuss whether to appeal the Warner Ridge lawsuit to the California Supreme Court.

A three-judge state Court of Appeal panel ruled unanimously Tuesday that the council illegally changed the zoning on the 21.5-acre property in Woodland Hills in January, 1990, a move led by Picus to block a development firm’s plans for a 810,000-square-foot office complex on the site.

It is up to the council to decide whether to appeal.

Picus asked her colleagues to consider appealing the case because of its potentially expensive financial effect on the city.

The Warner Ridge developers have asked for $100 million in damages. Owners of another tract in Woodland Hills have filed suit on similar grounds, asking for $2.5 million, and city officials have estimated that the owners of as many as 8,000 other sites could fall into the same category.

Picus has said she used zoning laws to block the office project because her constituents in Woodland Hills opposed construction of the complex, even though the land was designated for commercial use in the community plan for the area.

If the court’s ruling is left unchallenged, “neighborhoods across the city will be threatened with development detrimental to the well-being of each community,” Picus warned the council Friday, because the court decision strips the city of its prior ability to radically downzone properties, regardless of community plan provisions.

The appellate court ruling also could force the city to begin rezoning thousands of properties that, similar to the Warner Ridge site, are in areas where zoning conflicts with the community plan, she said.

“I’ll go down fighting before I’ll let the Los Angeles taxpayers pay off East Coast banks for their bad loans,” Picus said when asked her views on an appeal.

Picus has contended that the real force behind the Warner Ridge lawsuit is Morgan Guaranty Trust, a New York City bank that loaned more than $40 million to the would-be developers of the office complex.

Morgan Guaranty loaned more than it should have to the developers, who, in turn, paid too much for the property, Picus contends.

The development partnership, Warner Ridge Associates, argued in its lawsuit that the city wrongfully deprived it of the value of its investment because Picus, to curry favor with voters opposed to the project, led the City Council to illegally change the site’s zoning, ignoring the community plan.