Planners Deadlock Over Warner Ridge Project : Woodland Hills: Court required a ruling by this weekend. A vacationing commissioner will have the deciding vote when the panel meets next week.

Despite a court-mandated deadline for action on the controversial Warner Ridge development in Woodland Hills, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission deadlocked over approval of the project Thursday in an unusual meeting at which all four commissioners present criticized the proposal.

Although a Superior Court judgment required that a decision be reached by this weekend, attorneys for both the city and the developer agreed to delay action until next Thursday, when all five commission members are expected to be present.

Approval for the long-bedeviled project, which in its current form would consist of 690,000 square feet of commercial space and 125 condominiums, seemed certain to most observers when the meeting began at the Van Nuys Woman’s Club. But as the morning wore on, Commissioner Lydia H. Kennard expressed reservations over the height of the proposed seven-story buildings that would form part of the complex, and eventually joined colleague Suzette Neiman in voting against the proposal.

The four commissioners present deadlocked 2 to 2, giving Commissioner Fernando Torres-Gil, who was on vacation Thursday, the deciding vote when the commission meets again next week.

“This on its face is not a good site plan,” Kennard told the audience of 60 people, more than half of whom were residents opposed to the development. “It’s very destructive. . . . I’d have to say the design is just abominable.”

Kennard, however, also admitted hesitation in voting against the project because of its tortured history, citing a fairness issue on behalf of Warner Ridge Associates, which fought the city for two years in the courts to win the right to develop the property.

Warner Ridge Associates sued the city in 1990, contending that the Los Angeles City Council, to curry favor with Woodland Hills homeowners opposed to the project, illegally deprived them of the value of their property by rezoning the land for residential use only.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court and a state Court of Appeal panel supported the developers.

In January, the company and the City Council agreed in a court-approved settlement to the present plan. The council also promised it would expedite the paperwork for the developers, compressing into several months a bureaucratic process that normally takes years.

Representatives of the city attorney said Thursday that the Planning Commission is not legally bound to approve the project. But under the terms of the settlement, they said, the city would be forced to pay Warner Ridge Associates millions of dollars in damages if the project cannot go forward.

Commission members expressed frustration that their freedom to decide the issue was effectively limited by the city’s agreement to the terms of the settlement. The present plan, President Theodore Stein Jr. declared with obvious irritation, is “basically being shoved down the commission’s throat.”

Commissioner William G. Luddy joined Stein in voting for the plan, but said he did so reluctantly because he found the project “ill-designed.”

“All the way around the table, this thing is a botch,” Luddy said.

Both he and Stein instead reiterated their support for the original plan submitted in 1989, terming it a “substantially superior project” that called for 810,000 square feet of commercial space. But the city attorney’s representatives advised the commissioners that they could not reintroduce that plan now.

Residents opposed to the proposed development repeated their call for a scaled-down proposal encompassing 471,000 square feet.

“The community is going to be damaged irreparably by this project,” said Robert Gross, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.

But developer Jack Spound told the commission that the smaller project was impossible, saying that such a small size was not “feasible . . . for us in any respect.”