Council Tentatively OKs Protections for Mulholland Drive : Environment: The 19-year-old plan would limit grading and development along a milewide strip to retain the road’s scenic character.

The Los Angeles City Council gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a long-delayed plan to protect Mulholland Drive from scenery-despoiling development.

The plan, first proposed 19 years ago, seeks to minimize grading in a 22-mile-long corridor to maintain the road’s rustic character and to prevent development from blocking panoramic views from the street.

A final vote on the plan is scheduled for next Wednesday.

The plan calls for special land-use regulations in a mile-wide corridor divided into two zones. The toughest restrictions would apply 500 feet on each side of Mulholland Drive.

Wednesday’s debate focused on a heavily lobbied amendment to include in the protected area the 172-acre Jefferson Development Corp. site overlooking the Hollywood Reservoir in the Cahuenga Pass. The amendment, by Councilman Michael Woo, was also tentatively approved.

“We’ve taken body blows, head blows and received so many setbacks in this plan,” Jerry Daniel, chairman of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., told the council in urging adoption of the plan and Woo’s amendment.

Daniel’s group, which represents dozens of homeowner organizations, has actively lobbied for approval of the plan, called the Mulholland Scenic Parkway Specific Plan.

Barbara Fine, vice president of the federation and an officer of the Benedict Canyon Homeowners Assn., later called the council action “a bittersweet victory” because passage had been delayed so long. “This should have been approved in the 1970s,” Fine said. “A lot has been developed in the interim that should have been regulated.”

One development curb in the plan stipulates that Mulholland Drive “shall consist of two lanes” only. However, a campaign by homeowners and environmentalists to include a prohibition on paving the westernmost nine miles of Mulholland Drive--now a dirt road--was defeated long ago.

The plan provides for establishing a paved bicycle path and two unpaved pathways, for hikers and horseback riders, along the paved and unpaved portions of the road.

The plan would prohibit grading of so-called “prominent ridges” within either corridor, and construction or grading within 100 feet of a stream or 200 feet of public parkland, except by special permission of the city’s planning director.

The plan also would set up a complicated set of standards limiting the height of structures, including houses and walls.

Advising the planning director on implementation will be a seven-member design review board appointed by the mayor, council members and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parkland agency.

The major debate Wednesday revolved around a motion by Woo to include the Jefferson development in the plan.

Two years ago, Woo had proposed that the development, involving a proposal to build 64 estate-sized homes, be excluded from the plan. Woo said Wednesday that his original proposal, which angered environmentalists, was an attempt to get the Jefferson firm and neighboring homeowners who opposed the project to agree on a compromise.

But the development firm has not offered a compromise and so its project--which is now under environmental review by city planning officials--should fall within the corridor, Woo said.

Opposing Woo was Councilman Hal Bernson, who argued that the developer and other affected property owners had not been properly notified of Woo’s proposal.

To be on the safe side, Bernson said, the council should send the Woo amendment back to the planning committee for consideration, allowing time for notifications to be sent.

Bernson, who is chairman of the planning panel, promised to have the Woo amendment back before the full council in a week.

But Woo passionately argued for immediate passage of his amendment, even as Councilman Nate Holden accused him of delaying the adoption of the overall plan with his original Jefferson proposal. Afterward, Woo said that even a week’s delay might have given lobbyists for Jefferson time to tip the scales in behalf of exempting their project from the plan.

The plan would have little effect on the number of units in the Jefferson project but would sharply curtail the amount of grading and the size of the project’s lots.

BACKGROUND

Mulholland Drive was proposed in 1913 as a place for pleasure driving along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains by William Mulholland, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water Department. The road was opened in 1924. In the late 1960s, legislation was introduced in the Assembly to appropriate money for a freeway along Mulholland. The bill did not pass, but the issue galvanized people interested in preserving the road’s rustic character. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council tentatively approved an ordinance, in the works for 19 years, to protect a 22-mile-long corridor along the scenic drive.