Warner Study Widened : Development: Los Angeles Planning Commission again orders environmental review for 57 million square feet at the center.

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission on Thursday ordered its staff to widen the environmental review of expansion plans for Warner Center--repeating an action it took last month but rescinded after homeowners accused the commissioners of acting in secret.

By a 3-0 vote, with two members absent, the commission told Deputy Planning Director Robert Sutton to study the environmental effects of zoning the center for 57 million square feet of development--almost four times as much as the current 15 million.

The study is for the Warner Center Specific Plan, which city planners are now drafting, to govern development at the commercial center into the next century. The plan as now envisioned would allow 35 million square feet of development.

Commission Vice President Theodore Stein stressed that the commission’s action is not a signal that it would support development on the larger scale, but was taken simply to ensure that the plan that eventually emerges is legally defensible. Otherwise, the city would be open to challenges that it did not adequately consider other alternatives, commissioners said.

The commission’s action Thursday repeated a similar order issued last month.

But that order was rescinded less than a week later because the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization tracking the Warner Center expansion debate complained that the commission failed to notify them that the issue would be discussed, violating the state’s Brown Act requiring that public meetings stick to an agenda publicized in advance.

Developers did know about the meeting, however, and were able to present their case for expanding the environmental review.

Stein on Thursday denied any wrongdoing by the commission.

“The community has to know there are no back-room dealings going on,” he said, but later conceded that “the perception” of secrecy in the minds of homeowners “is as important as the reality.”

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who has resisted the expanded review in the past, sent her planning deputy, Jim Dawson, to the commission meeting to express opposition. Dawson said after the meeting that developing Warner Center to 57 million square feet is “so unrealistic, why even bother wasting the taxpayers’ money studying it?”

In a separate action, the commission listened to testimony on whether to extend an interim control ordinance that governs development in Warner Center until the Specific Plan is completed. The current ordinance expires next month, but planners do not expect to have the Specific Plan ready for six months to a year.