Donor’s Plan Was Speeded After Calls From Bradley : City Hall: Staff protested shortcuts for proposed golf course. Mayor voiced concern at ‘unreasonable delays.’

Late in 1989, top Los Angeles city planning officials were alerted that a developer’s proposed golf club in the San Fernando Valley was “a priority project involving interest by the mayor’s office.”

Officials of Cosmo World Corp., a major campaign contributor to Mayor Tom Bradley, had complained about delays in securing city approvals for the $50-million project in an environmentally sensitive area that harbors an endangered plant.

On at least four subsequent occasions, Bradley called city Planning Department officials to inquire about the status of the project in Big Tujunga Wash. One top department official said the mayor asked him to speed up the city’s review, saying that environmental analysts were being “too picky” about the project by the Japanese developer who also owns the Pebble Beach golf links.

The stakes in developing the 355-acre site abutting the San Gabriel Mountains are particularly high because the city has designated the boulder-strewn, desert-like terrain as one of eight “ecologically important areas” of Los Angeles.

But planning officials took some unusual shortcuts, prompting protests from their own staff who were concerned that the project’s full environmental impact was not being disclosed to the public.

Officials, The Times found, expedited the project by:

- Prematurely releasing an environmental assessment that their own staff later criticized as misleading and “postured to essentially promote the project.”

- Sidestepping a second report that would have notified the public about new information--such as a federal study that concluded the golf course was likely to jeopardize an endangered plant called the slender-horned spineflower.

- Assigning a planner to work exclusively on the project. When the planner became ill with hepatitis, her supervisor had documents sent to her home so she could continue to work, the planner said.

The Planning Department has come under fire not only for taking too long to review projects but also for allowing politicians to set its priorities and influence its recommendations. An audit of the Planning Department last summer found “an overpoliticized department focused on satisfying the mayor and City Council rather than providing professional recommendations.”

Planning officials said the mayor did not ask the department to support the golf course project, but only to hasten the review. They also said the developer did not receive special treatment and the environmental assessment has not been compromised.

The mayor did not try to influence planning officials, and he contacted them only after Cosmo World experienced “unreasonable delays,” said a statement by Bradley’s office.

The mayor “has made no decision about the merits of the project,” nor is it a priority project of his, said Bradley press secretary Bill Chandler.

He also said that campaign contributions do not “influence this or other decisions by the mayor.”

“Anytime you’ve got the mayor making inquiries, it makes you more sensitive,” said Frank Eberhard, deputy director of the Planning Department.

However, Eberhard said, “If politics were calling the shots on this project, the review would’ve been out of the department by now. I think we’ve looked at this project very closely (for ways to expedite it). But we haven’t pulled our punches on it.”

Steve Timm, vice president of the Cosmo World project, said that “certainly we were putting pressure” on planning officials to expedite the project and met at least three times with Bradley at City Hall to brief him on the progress. But he denied that the company exerted any pressure on Bradley to intercede. “The mayor has shown an interest in it because it is a good project,” Timm said.

During 1987, Cosmo World began purchasing acreage in the flood plain of Big Tujunga Wash, and by January, 1988, city officials had ordered the company to submit the golf course project to a full environmental review.

Such reviews often take two to four years--an ongoing source of complaints from developers. A Planning Department report last June showed that one-third of about 50 pending projects had been under review for at least three years.

The golf course review has consumed four years because of the many complex environmental issues and the need to coordinate the city review with a separate federal analysis, officials said. The city also had to bring in engineering experts to evaluate the developer’s plan to build a channel through Big Tujunga Wash, where an unruly stream wiped out the Foothill Boulevard Bridge during a 1969 storm.

“It’s got everything--endangered species, flood control improvements, earthquake faults, you name it,” said Merryl Edelstein, head of the city’s environmental review unit.

Now, the city’s environmental assessment is about two months from completion, officials said. Then the project will need permits from the Planning Commission and City Council.

Approval also is required from the Army Corps of Engineers, which has indicated that it believes the golf course will not harm the environment.

The Los Angeles Planning Department, in its 1973 Conservation Plan, identified Big Tujunga Wash as an “ecologically important area” and said that the city “shall restrict land uses” in such areas and encourage “the establishment of wildlife preserves in areas containing rare or endangered species.”

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy opposes building a golf course in Big Tujunga Wash, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the project should be blocked because the wash is part of a rapidly shrinking habitat for the tiny slender-horned spineflower and may be the home of several other endangered species, including a bird called the least Bell’s vireo.

On the other side is Cosmo World, owner of the famed Pebble Beach golf courses and golf properties in Japan. The Big Tujunga project is being promoted as an 18-hole championship course that could lure the Los Angeles Open from the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. Memberships in the course, to be called Los Angeles International Golf Club, probably would cost $50,000 to $60,000, one company official said. A two-story, 50,000-square-foot clubhouse would also be built.

A 100-member business-oriented support group has said that the golf course would provide a “shot in the arm” to the “economically deprived” Sunland-Tujunga community. But Sylvia Gross, head of the Sunland-Tujunga Assn. of Residents, has complained that the environmental impacts of the project have not been adequately analyzed or disclosed.

Cosmo World--a California corporation owned by Minuro Isutani, a Japanese computer and sporting goods magnate--paid $850 million for the Pebble Beach courses and last year tried to make them increasingly private.

As the company started buying land in Big Tujunga Wash in July, 1987, it also acquired political allies to help guide its project through City Hall.

The company and its employees began making contributions to Bradley, reaching a total of $30,338 as of mid-1991, records show. Cosmo World also hired as its attorney Jun Mori, a Bradley appointee to the Harbor Commission and one of his frequent traveling companions on city trade missions abroad.

Minutes of a September, 1988, meeting showed that the mayor’s office already was taking an interest in the project. Bradley aide Jeff Matsui met with the developer, Mori and city planners to discuss the city’s environmental review.

It was “very infrequent” that aides to the mayor attended such meetings and Matsui’s presence “obviously meant the mayor was interested,” according to Kei Uyeda, former deputy director for the Planning Department.

Matsui, whose regular job is to act as Bradley’s liaison to the Harbor Department, was identified in the minutes as someone who could line up meetings for Cosmo World with “high level departmental staff” in other city agencies that would review the project.

On Dec. 9, 1988, less than three months after this meeting, Cosmo World and its employees contributed $20,000 to Bradley’s 1989 reelection campaign.

Matsui and Mori have not returned phone calls.

In a Dec. 15, 1989, memo to “all executives and management staff,” Uyeda said the golf club was “a priority project involving interest by the mayor’s office.”

His memo indicated that the mayor’s office had shown an interest in one other private project, the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Uyeda, now a City Hall consultant to developers, said the “mayor’s office contacted me every two or three months to ask about the status” of the project, but he refused to identify the caller.

“I’d rather not say who it was (because) I still have to deal with them,” he said. “But it definitely was not the mayor.”

“It’s always been common knowledge the golf course project was of special interest to the mayor,” said Ruby Justis, an associate city planner involved in the environmental review of the golf course.

“We expedited the draft EIR in 1988 because of it,” Justis said. “I was home with hepatitis and my supervisor had documents dropped off at my house to work on them. I could barely crawl I was so sick. If that isn’t giving it a priority, I don’t know what is.”

State law requires local governments to conduct environmental reviews of major developments. In Los Angeles, the first step in the process is production of a draft environmental impact report, utilizing information supplied by consultants hired by the developer. The document next is reviewed by city staff and revised for accuracy and fairness, then is released to the public for comment.

A final impact report incorporates public comment, new studies and any other information about the effect of the project. The environmental review is then used by decision makers to determine a project’s fate.

In early 1990, the city’s handling of the Cosmo World project began to alarm city planners.

Top officials had prematurely released to the public a supplement to the draft EIR. The document concluded that the project could meet an existing need for more golf facilities and would have no major environmental impact. In fact, it said that the project would indirectly benefit the spineflower by restoring cyclical flooding to certain parts of the wash.

Planners complained that their superiors failed to comply with state and city rules requiring that such documents be reviewed by city staff before being distributed to the public.

The document, Justis alleged in an April 27, 1990, memo, also contained “inaccurate and misleading” information, such as claims that the golf course would benefit the spineflower.

“The integrity of the EIR process should not be compromised in order to ‘expedite’ the project,” Justis wrote Linn Wyatt, the EIR unit supervisor at the time.

In two memos in early 1990 to her boss, Al Landini, Wyatt said the supplemental document was “biased” and “postured to essentially promote the project.”

The city was risking “possible legal challenge” because the document failed to meet state and city environmental requirements, Wyatt warned.

Landini declined to discuss circumstances surrounding the release of the document but said he was not pressured by anyone and was not aware of mayoral interest in the project. “If I’d have felt that circulating it was wrong, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said.

Eberhard said he was not involved in the decision to permit release of the document without a staff review. “In retrospect, I think that was a mistake,” he added. “It was a departure from our standard procedure.”

Critics within the department said the action probably saved the developer a few months of review.

Throughout 1990, some city planners continued to question whether the full impact of the Cosmo World project had been disclosed. They urged that a second supplemental EIR be done because there were important new findings:

- The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service concluded in June, 1990, “It is our biological opinion that the proposed Los Angeles International Golf Course Project is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the slender-horned spineflower.”

- The developer estimated that major golf events would draw 40,000 spectators per day, requiring parking for 16,000 cars at nearby schools, churches and other facilities.

- City engineers questioned the feasibility of Cosmo World’s flood-control plans, which might require construction of an eight-foot-high wall that Justis said would probably have a major visual impact on nearby residents.

During a planning staff meeting on June 12, 1990, Deputy Director Eberhard supported the call for the second supplemental EIR, minutes show.

Shortly thereafter, Cosmo World moved to block the reassessment, which, its officials said, could have taken an additional six months.

At a July 5, 1990, meeting with planners, Cosmo World representatives made their opposition known. Five days later, Cosmo World’s environmental consultant, Michael Brandman & Associates, sent a letter to Bradley’s aide Matsui outlining a chronology of delays in the project.

Cosmo World Executive Vice President Toyohiko Honda then wrote Bradley on July 30: “In order for our company to still achieve economic viability for this project we must obtain the necessary permits to start construction at the earliest possible time. . . . We respectfully request if you can assist us in expediting the current review process. . . . “

Nine days later, a Bradley political committee got a $1,000 contribution from the golf club.

Honda said recently he does not remember writing the letter. Asked why his firm contributed to Bradley’s campaigns, the executive said, “I thought if we can know the mayor, that might help our business.”

On Sept. 6, 1990, then-Planning Department Director Kenneth Topping met with Wyatt and Justis for an hourlong briefing on the Cosmo World project.

Topping told his aides that the meeting was prompted by an inquiry from the mayor, according to a notation in Justis’ appointment book, obtained by The Times under the state Public Records Act.

Topping said in an interview that he got two or three phone calls from Bradley about the project during the summer of 1990.

Bradley typically asked “what the status was and why it was taking so long,” Topping recalled. “He’d received a complaint from the project proponent.”

Topping, who retired in December, 1990, said he was unable to recall the dates of the calls and said that he did not feel pressured by the mayor.

In one interview, Topping said that Bradley had never before called him about an EIR. Topping later said he did not consider Bradley’s inquiries unusual but was unable to cite other instances.

On Sept. 17, 1990, Topping convened a meeting with planning staff, Cosmo attorney Mori and mayoral aide Matsui. Wyatt and Justice, the two top environmental reviewers, were not scheduled to work that day and did not attend the session.

Topping discussed ways to expedite the project and said he had told the mayor “we could do without a supplemental EIR,” according to one attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Topping, who received an 18-month $220,000 consulting contract with the city in December, 1990, said in an interview that he recalls little about the meeting, except that the major issue was whether Cosmo World should be compelled “to do another go-round” of environmental review.

By December, 1990, debate about the new review had been dropped.

On Dec. 7, 1990, Bradley received a $1,000 contribution from Cosmo World.

Later that month, Topping asked Justis for an update on the Cosmo World project, noting that Bradley had inquired about it, Justis said. Within several months, she was ordered by another official to work only on the golf course project and to put aside six other large projects.

The EIR unit’s current chief, Edelstein, is also working on the golf course project in addition to supervising a dozen staff members. “It’s unusual because I’m supposed to be more of a manager,” she said.

In May, 1991, Bradley inquired again about the status of the EIR during a phone call to Acting Planning Director Melanie Fallon, who was in Washington, D.C.

At Fallon’s suggestion, Bradley talked to Eberhard. “The mayor didn’t say kick anyone in the rear end,” Eberhard recalled. “He asked if we couldn’t move (the EIR) along. He was concerned that it was taking so long . . . that the staff was being picky.”

“I told him the project was complicated,” he said. “Actually, we were doing about everything that could be done . . . to move it along.”

A Golf Course in Question

Cosmo World Corp., a wholly owned corporation of Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, has proposed development of a 350-acre private golf club in an environmentally sensitive area of the San Fernando Valley. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the site in Big Tujunga Wash is home to one endangered species and possibly several others.

Since 1987, Cosmo World has been seeking environmental clearance from the city of Los Angeles and has asked for Mayor Tom Bradley’s help. Bradley has intervened with city planning officials to try to expedite the complex project. Planning officials say that Bradley’s inquiries did not influence their decisions, which shortened the review of the project.

The completion of the environmental review is about two months away.

KNOWN ENDANGERED SPECIES

This plant, which is known to grows in the Big Tujunga Wash area, is protected by state and federal law.

Slender-horned spineflower, tiny springtime annual with dark green foliage and a pinkish flower, above.

OTHER ENDANGERED SPECIES

These endangered species, which may live in the development site, are protected by either state or federal law.

Least Bell’s vireo, a tiny gray songbird.

Nevin’s barberry, a dense shrub with bluish foliage and yellow flowers.

POSSIBLY ENDANGERED

These species, which may live in the development site, and either candidates for federal protection as endangered species or are under consideration for such status.

California gnatcatcher, a 4.5-inch gray bird with a black tail.

Arroyo toad, a two-inch burrowing amphibian.

San Diego horned lizard, a small flat-bodied reptile with distinctive horns and pointed scales.

Los Angeles pocket mouse, a small burrowing rodent.

Cactus wren, a 6-inch-long, brown-and-white bird with a curved bill.

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS*

In the last four years, Mayor Tom Bradley has received a total of $30,000 in campaign contributions from the Cosmo World Corp. and its employees. Figures shown are through the first half of 1991: 1987: $5,838 1988: $21,000 1989: $1,000 1990: $2,000 1991: $500

* In a 1991 audit, officials ordered Bradley to refund $3,000 in campaign contributions, which exceeded a ceiling set by the campaign finance reform law.

Sources: Public records, state and federal wildlife officials, Cosmo World Corp.