Council Gives In, OKs Warner Ridge

Defeated by adverse court rulings, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday abandoned efforts to block construction of a large commercial project on Warner Ridge in Woodland Hills, surrendering in a battle that may haunt city planning.

The council voted 11 to 2 to allow construction of a 690,000-square-foot commercial project and 125 condominiums on the 21.5-acre site, despite bitter opposition from neighbors and their representative, Councilwoman Joy Picus. The only votes against the settlement came from Councilman Joel Wachs and Picus, who continued to attack the project.

Under the settlement, the developers agreed to accept building permits from the city instead of the $100 million in damages the partnership had sued for. In addition to being given permission to build the project, the developers won exemptions from $25 million in fees they would have had to pay. These include traffic mitigation fees, an arts fee and others.

Witnessed by a bevy of attorneys, the agreement was later read into the record before Judge R. William Schoettler, who helped mediate settlement of the lawsuit against the city.

The lawsuit alleged that the council, led by Picus, illegally changed the zoning of the Warner Ridge site in 1990 to block the project, despite designation of the site for commercial use in the city’s community plan.

Although the agreement will settle the lawsuit, the reverberations have shaken the city’s planning foundation.

An appeals court ruling, which supported the developers, may have established that the zoning on as many as 8,000 parcels in the city is illegally at odds with community plans. The Warner Ridge litigation also inspired at least one similar lawsuit against the city by another Woodland Hills developer, for $2.5 million.

Council President John Ferraro said Wednesday the city’s decision to give up the Warner Ridge fight should teach the council to be more cautious in seeking to block development.

“We’re going to have to be more respectful of the law and of property owners’ rights,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, another council negotiator. “And we can’t allow ourselves to be run by the homeowners and those who cry the loudest.”

Meanwhile, Picus angrily decried the settlement, accusing her colleagues of caving in to the “greedy developers and Eastern banks” who, she said, were behind the Warner Ridge project.

The victor in the settlement is Warner Ridge Associates, a partnership composed of Johnson-Wax Development Co. and the Spound Cos.

“I’m going to build some buildings now,” said developer Jack Spound. Spound said he is negotiating with a prospective tenant who has signaled a desire to rent most of what Spound is allowed to build. He declined to name the client.

Robert Gross, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, said he is outraged by the council’s decision. His group led opposition to the project, charging that it would create 6,000 additional auto trips on the streets each day.

Nor was Gross conceding defeat Wednesday. “The fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” adding that his organization may file a lawsuit to overturn the settlement.

However, Carlyle Hall, a land-use attorney who has represented homeowners, predicted that it will be difficult to challenge the settlement. According to Ferraro, Hall was instrumental in helping persuade lawmakers that the city was bound to lose if it appealed to higher courts. “He had credibility with a certain group of council members who might not choose to believe me when I told them our case wasn’t good,” Ferraro said.

Other sources close to the litigation also credited Ferraro and attorney Richard Riordan, a city recreation and parks commissioner with political ties to Mayor Tom Bradley, with helping get a settlement last week.

In recent weeks, two court rulings knocked the legs from under the city’s defenses in the litigation.

The first was by the state Court of Appeal, which held Dec. 31 that the city had acted illegally by zoning the site for 65 single-family homes when the community plan designated the land for commercial development. The council should have obeyed the dictates of its community plan, the court said.

Within a week, Superior Court Judge Kathryn Doi Todd ruled that the city had deprived Warner Ridge owners of all economically viable use of their property.