LMU Expansion Plan Wins OK From City Council : Development: The proposal to build dormitories, a business school, theater and athletic field on 27 acres draws vigorous protest from neighbors, who weigh a lawsuit.

Loyola Marymount University’s plan to expand its Westchester campus onto open bluffs overlooking Marina del Rey won approval from the Los Angeles City Council this week, ending nearly a decade of debate over the proposal.

The council on Tuesday rejected protests from a group of die-hard opponents and unanimously agreed to let the private, Jesuit university build dormitories, a business school, a 1,000-seat theater and an athletic field on land zoned for single-family homes.

“This has been a long, long road since we acquired this property,” said a relieved Father Thomas J. O’Malley, president of the university.

Neighbors opposed to the expansion said, however, that they are not necessarily ready to give up their fight. They said they will decide within a week whether to challenge the city’s environmental review of the project.

“We are reviewing our situation and it looks like in all probability we are going to file a lawsuit, because they are getting away with murder,” said Melroy Pereira, one of the homeowners leading opposition to the expansion. “That is the only thing they will respect.”

The university purchased 27 acres of vacant land west of its 96-acre campus in 1983. The property, with a sweeping view of the Westside and Santa Monica Bay, has long been a popular spot for walking, exercising dogs and flying model airplanes.

Loyola plans over 18 years to build apartments and dormitories for 1,250 students, a business school and a student center that will include the theater and a cafeteria. The athletic field will top a subterranean, 900-space parking garage.

O’Malley said the goal of the expansion is to improve facilities and allow more students to live on campus, not to substantially increase enrollment.

An environmental review found that 4,649 undergraduate and graduate students attend the school. A cap of 5,168 students was approved by the City Council.

“We are trying to have more students live on campus and not be so much of a commuter school,” O’Malley said, adding that Loyola hopes to have as many as 70% of its students living on campus, compared to less than 50% today.

Despite the student cap, neighbors said the university already has more students living on campus than most colleges and predicted it will return to the city later with a request to expand its enrollment. “We believe LMU intends to increase student enrollment,” Westchester resident Ronald Marks said in a prepared statement to the council. “The implications of this are drastic and have not been addressed by LMU or the environmental impact report.”

Opponents also complained that the university should not be exempt from a law that limits construction on the bluffs to a maximum height of 30 feet. The campus center will be 75 feet tall and all of the housing well in excess of the height limit.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who supported the expansion, said the alternative would be for the school to build shorter but wider buildings that would leave fewer “view corridors.”

“The ordinance was intended to deal with residential development on the bluffs, with the enormous single-family homes that are overwhelming the bluffs,” Galanter said. “The issue here is that you can’t build a university like you build single-family homes.”

Despite a wide range of complaints on issues ranging from noise to traffic, critics said Tuesday that they were ready to drop their protests if they could win a few final concessions from Loyola officials.

The university readily agreed to two of the requests--that construction vehicles stay off Fordham Road and 78th Street as well as residential streets leading to the campus, and that the housing be rented only to full-time students and faculty, not outsiders.

Neighbors also demanded that dormitory windows facing neighboring homes be sealed and that the university create a $100,000 fund that neighbors could use for lawsuits to enforce the city’s restrictions on the development.

Loyola officials balked at those proposals. They said the new athletic field will already provide a sound buffer between the neighborhood and the students’ housing. In addition, Loyola planners argued that the building code requires windows to be left open and that they are not prepared to redesign the structures with air conditioning.

The “compliance fund” is not needed, they said, because city officials are already empowered to enforce the construction guidelines.

Pereira said residents would drop their protests if Loyola officials simply agreed to seal the dorm windows.

“That would be an important gesture to the community,” Pereira said. “Those noises are going to carry through the night and not just for now. It’s for future generations. And it is also just on the principle. They walked over the whole neighborhood, they should give up something.”

Diane Abbitt, a lawyer for the opponents, said there could be several grounds for challenging the project’s environmental study. She said a noise study is outdated, a survey of native plants inadequate and the amount of grading underestimated.

University officials stood by the environmental review.

They said construction will begin with an expansion and improvement of Hughes Terrace, the road across the face of the bluffs that will become a principal access for both construction and for the new facilities. Next, the university plans to build the three-story business school.