Synagogue Seeks to Expand School Over Residents’ Objections

Over loud objections from its Woodland Hills neighbors, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue with a checkered history of compliance with zoning regulations requested city permission Tuesday to more than double the size of its school to 140 pupils.

“We’ve not been a perfect neighbor and we’ve made mistakes,” Steve Afriat, lobbyist for Beit Hamidrash Temple, admitted to a Los Angeles city panel reviewing its expansion plan. But Afriat said that granting the synagogue’s application to expand would make it a better, not a worse, neighbor.

Supporting the temple’s application before the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee has been Councilwoman Joy Picus. The committee, with only two of its three members present, split on the request, one councilman opposing it with another warily recommending approval.

A final vote by the entire council is expected within a month.

Despite its assurances, city planners and local residents were especially skeptical of the temple’s plans.

“We just don’t think that bigger will be better in this case,” said Robert Janovici, the city’s chief zoning administrator.

The temple, located at 5850 Fallbrook Ave., seeks to expand its school enrollment from 56 students to 140. The additional students would be taught in a single-family home that the temple has purchased at 5840 Fallbrook Ave.

The temple is not asking to expand religious activities at the site. City zoning rules limit the synagogue to 60 worshipers.

In a rare double-barreled defeat for a religious institution, both Janovici’s staff and the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals earlier this year recommended denying Beit Hamidrash’s school expansion plan. “It was highly unusual for a religious facility not to be approved,” Janovici said.

“The idea of allowing them to expand . . . is ludicrous,” Louise Nixon, a neighbor and owner of a rental property adjoining the temple, told the council’s planning committee Tuesday. “And it’s not a question of religion, because I’m Jewish and a third of the neighbors are Jewish.”

Carol Brock, another neighbor, objected to noise from the existing school. “I have to go to the back of my house, and even then I can’t get away from the noise of the children on the playground,” Brock said.

The synagogue has a history of running afoul of zoning regulations.

In 1988, the congregation was cited by city officials for illegally operating a church at 22733 Oxnard St. in a residential zone, city records show. Further action against the temple was suspended, however, when it applied for a zoning permit to legalize its activities. It obtained such a permit for one year.

In 1989, the city zoning administrator and the Board of Zoning Appeals denied the temple’s application to move and operate at the Fallbrook address. However, the council overturned the advice of its professional zoning officials and allowed the move, attaching 26 conditions.

Critics say the temple has not lived up to the conditions.

The temple’s members and parents of students attending its school regularly violate conditions designed to reduce traffic congestion and parking problems in the neighborhood, Nixon complained.

Bert Sincosky, the city zoning administrator on the case, agreed.

“The applicants have shown a complete disregard for their neighbors, for the zoning and building regulations of the city of Los Angeles, as well as flagrantly violated many of the conditions of approval” for their operation at on Fallbrook Avenue, Sincosky wrote.

At the time of its application to expand its school, the question also arose as to whether the temple had not already illegally expanded its operation to the adjoining property.

In fact, the city’s Building and Safety Department cited the temple for illegally operating a school at the 5850 Fallbrook Ave. site within the past year. That citation was dropped after the temple argued that this school operation was unrelated to Beit Hamidrash, even though its operator was the assistant to Beit Hamidrash’s rabbi.

But Afriat, the temple’s lobbyist, said if the school were allowed to expand it would help, not hurt, matters. The new plan would take traffic off Califa Street, a cul-de-sac lined with residences, and channel it to busy Fallbrook Avenue, Afriat said.

Moreover, the school would agree not to have any classroom windows facing residential areas and to prohibit more than 25% of the students from being on the playground at one time.

At the planning committee hearing, Councilman Nate Holden opposed the temple’s application. “It hasn’t shown any will or intent to comply with city rules,” Holden said.

Councilman Hal Bernson said he was “very hesitant” to grant approval but would do so largely because Picus, who represents the affected area, approved of it.

Picus deputy Jim Dawson told the panel that Picus believed the temple’s zoning violations in the past were minor and that the new plan would improve the situation. Dawson also said that Fallbrook Avenue is a “major highway, and not a local residential street.”