City Council Approves ‘Fun Zone’ for Pier : Landmarks: It could open as early as the summer of 1993. Opponents threaten to launch a referendum petition on the project.

After a debate that was anything but amusing, the City Council narrowly approved a small amusement park for historic Santa Monica Pier on Tuesday night, clearing the way for the city to seek bids on a project many view as the key to reversing the decline of the 71-year-old structure.

With minor modifications, the 4-3 vote left intact the Planning Commission’s March endorsement of the “Fun Zone” by rejecting an appeal by a pier neighbor to kill the project.

During hours of discussion leading up to the decision, Councilman Dennis Zane, an ardent supporter of the city-backed pier plan, termed the zone--which will feature an 85-foot Ferris wheel, a 55-foot roller coaster and other attractions--a modest proposal with “momentous implications.” Rejecting the project, he argued, would leave one of the state’s most treasured landmarks vulnerable to underfinancing and mismanagement.

“Don’t deny the pier the opportunity to survive,” Zane implored.

The city subsidizes the pier to the tune of about $900,000 annually, an expense that Zane said the city might not always be able to afford.

According to city estimates, the Fun Zone and related projects will erase that deficit and even place the pier in the black by about $12,000.

But some council members suggest that a handful of amusement rides will prove to be more of a problem than a panacea.

Council member Robert T. Holbrook said he found the project lacking when he balanced the advantages of more revenue against the disadvantages of more costs and hassles.

Weighing in with a gloomy Fun Zone forecast, Holbrook predicted that attendance at the low-thrill attractions will decline once the newness wears off and that additional security costs at the pier will prove to be greater than the cost of the two extra officers the Police Department is now requesting. He also said the the impact on the surrounding neighborhood will be negative.

“It pretty much comes off as a wash, so I ask myself, ‘Why are we doing this?’ ” he said.

Meanwhile, neighbors who have criticized the project as likely to increase traffic, noise and gang activity in the area left City Hall on Tuesday night threatening to launch a referendum petition on the matter. Backers of such a measure would have to collect the signatures of 10% of the city’s approximately 53,000 registered voters within the next 30 days in order to get it on the November ballot.

Opponents of the Fun Zone have been particularly critical of the project’s environmental impact review, which they say failed to properly assess the toll the project will exact on the community.

During an exchange with Mayor Ken Genser during a break Tuesday night, Leigh Kavanaugh, director of the Belle Bleu Inn near the beach, termed the EIR “as thin as toilet paper.”

Genser acknowledged that the document is flawed but not enough to override the merits of a basically sound project that, he stressed, amounts to little more than the addition of three rides on the pier.

“I must confess I don’t understand what the major concern is,” he said.

The pier currently hosts six children’s rides and three larger rides during an extended summer season.

The Fun Zone, which could open as early as the summer of 1993 and is planned as a year-round attraction, is designed to accommodate six child’s rides and six family rides at the southwest corner of the pier, plus 21 game booths, up from the 13 that are there now.

In an attempt to assuage neighborhood concerns, the council reduced the height of the Ferris wheel from an originally planned height of 115 feet and ordered that the pier close by 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday between Labor Day and Memorial Day. During the rest of the year it will close at 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on Fridays, Saturdays and holidays.

The council also stipulated that the environmental impact review can apply only to the Fun Zone and not to any other large-scale pier proposals, such as a retail plaza.

But the restriction still leaves open the possibility that the pier can be developed piecemeal, city planning officials said.

Most significantly, two proposed restaurants on the pier--the 675-seat Sinbad’s and the 350-seat Ashgrove--will not be bound by the EIR restriction.

Voting in favor of the pier plan Tuesday were Zane, Genser, Mayor Pro Tem Judy Abdo and Tony Vazquez.

Kelly Olsen, Holbrook and Herb Katz opposed it, with Katz saying he favored building the zone without a roller coaster, with the option of adding it later.

The roller coaster has been a particular source of anxiety for neighbors, who believe it has the most potential to attract gangs.

But Zane and others have described the 55-foot coaster as too “wimpy” to draw a criminal element and they stress that the ride is crucial to the financial viability of the project.

The council did, however, limit the “drop” of the coaster to 30 feet--one of the shortest available--to make sure the ride is “family-oriented.”

Tuesday’s vote marks a major turning point for the pier, which thrived as an entertainment and retail mecca in the 1920s and ‘30s but subsequently lapsed into decline.

By 1973, the City Council had ordered its demolition, but a grass-roots movement saved the structure and led to its designation as a city landmark.

Intent on revitalizing the pier, the council in 1981 appointed a 15-member citizens task force to develop a pier plan. Two years later, when winter storms destroyed more than 100,000 square feet of the western end, the nonprofit Pier Restoration Corporation was created to handle the project. Due to concerns about traffic, the PRC Board of Directors last year voted to drop plans for a Central Plaza retail area along the southern edge of the pier.