Fox Gets Hounded : Development: Opponents of studio’s $200-million expansion plan disrupt community meeting and angrily denounce the project.

The script called for an open-house-style get-together.

In an atmosphere of civility and professionalism, Fox Studio officials would chat one-to-one with hundreds of nervous neighbors about its planned $200-million expansion. Questions would be answered, concerns would be duly noted, and everyone would walk away feeling better--or at least better informed.

By meeting’s end, not much was left of the original script. About 100 organized and angry project opponents had staged a raucous Saturday morning protest rally in front of the studio. They interrupted the ensuing community meeting with chants of “Sham!” They derided City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky as an agent of developers’ interests. They denounced Fox for banning cameras at the meeting and wrote the whole thing off as an illegal public relations whitewash.

Rather than promote cooperation and communication, the city-mandated “key group” meeting had provided opponents of the expansion a forum to demonstrate their resolve against the project.

Fox wants to add 771,000 square feet of studio and office facilities to its 53 acres at Pico Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars, and has threatened to leave Los Angeles if the project does not win city approval.

Attorney Mindy Gastor of Cheviot Hills set the tone of the meeting early. Wielding a bullhorn--as Fox officials looked on helplessly--she defended the protesters’ tactics.

“It is only because we have been denied the type of hearing that the city requires that we are acting this way,” she said.

The protesters used the bullhorn twice more during the meeting--each time waiting until Helen McCann, Fox’s project manager, finished a brief introductory presentation.

On Wednesday, Yaroslavsky, who did not attend the meeting but supports a scaled-down version of the expansion, lashed back at the protesters.

“What you saw there was guerrilla theater,” he said. He also accused one of the major opponents, Laura Lake, of using the issue to run for City Council. Lake unsuccessfully challenged Yaroslavsky for his council seat in 1989.

Usually, key group meetings are far more sedate, and not particularly common. The city requires them only when “batching” occurs--that is, when a developer such as Fox simultaneously seeks a zoning change for the property and a change in the broader community plan as well.

The city allows the meetings to be organized and run by the project applicant. The intent is for the developer to provide information to the public before actual public hearings, ostensibly so that neighbors of a major project can be reasonably informed when they attend the hearings.

Those familiar with the process say it generally works well. Sharon Kaplan, a consultant on government regulations whose firm, Psomas & Associates, is assisting Fox with its expansion plans, said of Saturday’s meeting: “A lot of people appreciated the opportunity to go up to experts to talk to people one-on-one.”

Others are more skeptical.

“The question in something like this is, whose meeting is it--the city’s or the developer’s?” said City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents a neighboring Westside district.

Some opponents of the expansion sharply criticize Fox for using an open-house format, which they maintained was a calculated attempt by Fox to manipulate the agenda and to thwart a general airing of views.

“The format was designed to isolate people so they wouldn’t share their views and information,” Lake said.

Some of the opponents cited the studio’s refusal to allow cameras into the meeting as evidence that the meeting was not, in fact, public.

Fox Vice President David Handelman said the company imposed the ban on cameras because officials felt they would be disruptive to “the dignity of the meeting.”

But cameras or not, dignity was in short supply as the pro-Fox forces, united under the name Friends of Fox, bickered with project opponents.

At one point, Handelman was interrupted during a conversation by Leslie Johnson, a Cheviot Hills resident, prompting the following exchange:

Handelman: “Excuse me, but who are you?”

Johnson: “I’m a resident.”

Handelman: “Then go home.”

A moment later, when Johnson made another attempt to interrupt, Handelman told her again to leave, this time heatedly.

Johnson said Handelman uttered an obscenity at her. Handelman insisted he did not, and described the project opponents’ behavior at the meeting as “rude beyond imagination.”

One of the angriest confrontations occurred between Val Cole, a representative of the California Country Club Homeowners Group, and Jeff Lowe, a Fox neighbor who supports the expansion.

Lowe contended he had been evicted from a meeting of Cole’s group in December without cause. Cole suggested that Lowe had been sent by Fox to intimidate the neighborhood group and had no reason to be at the December gathering because he lives outside the group’s membership area.

Matters of format and protocol aside, residents were protesting the timing of the key group meeting well before the fact.

Lake said the opponents of the project would sue the city because the meeting was held after Fox submitted its application for the expansion to the city Planning Commission. City planning officials say the normal procedure is to hold key group meetings before development applications are submitted.

“The city is so anxious to accommodate Fox, it’s jumping the gun,” Lake said Tuesday.

Pat Brown, a city planner, said officials in the city’s Department of Management and the Planning Commission are studying whether the meeting was “procedurally consistent” with the commission’s own guidelines.

An environmental impact report on the project was released by the city Dec. 26. The period for public comment on the report has been extended to March 15.