Supervisors Set to Vote Oct. 29 on Controversial La Vina Plan : Housing: They will decide whether to scale back the number of units in the proposed hillside development within the Angeles National Forest.

Los Angeles County Supervisors, holding what is likely to be the last public hearing on the La Vina housing development, set the stage Thursday for a showdown vote later this month in the bitter, five-year battle over the proposal.

About 100 people crowded into a supervisors’ meeting room in the Hall of Administration for the contentious 45-minute hearing pitting developers and their supporters in the Altadena foothill community against opponents, including members of the Altadena Town Council, the Sierra Club and other community residents.

The proposed project would be built on a wooded 220-acre site, much of it within the Angeles National Forest, at the north end of Lincoln Avenue.

In a vote scheduled for Oct. 29, the supervisors could decide to approve the developers’ original plan for a 272-home hillside development, limit the development to the 229 homes approved by the county’s Regional Planning Commission or further reduce it to 131 units, as recommended by the Altadena Town Council in several votes.

Opponents Thursday recommended reducing the project even more. The Town Council’s former land use committee chairwoman, Camille Dudley, suggested that only 50 units should be approved, and others said the project should not be built at all.

Throughout the hearing, supervisors made few comments, although Supervisor Ed Edelman at one point reminded opponents that the board had approved a 272-unit development in concept in 1989.

“I think we have to be realistic here,” Edelman said.

In August, the project developers--Southwest Diversified and Cantwell-Anderson--asked supervisors to review the Planning Commission’s decision to cut 43 units from the proposal. The commission’s decision was based largely on concerns that the northern end of the project site could be endangered by an earthquake fault and should not be included in discussions of new housing.

During Thursday’s hearing, however, Andrew Oliver, project manager, argued that the commission overstepped its authority by altering the project and had no proof that an earthquake fault near the project is active. To the contrary, Oliver and the project’s consultant said that recent seismological studies suggest the fault has long been dormant and poses no danger.

Other project supporters, meanwhile, said that the proposed homes would be a boon to the area, providing jobs and a new gated community. And, they said, developers have done everything possible to meet the environmental demands of opponents such as the Sierra Club.

Charles Jones of the San Gabriel Mountain Trailbuilders told supervisors that developers, after discussing the plan with opponents, had made a number of commitments to the forest, including addition of a hiking trail and replacement of oak trees that would be uprooted by development.

“If the Sierra Club intended to oppose the project regardless of the public benefit, why then did they pretend to negotiate . . . shouldn’t they have said right up front that they intended to oppose the project no matter what Southwest did?” Jones asked the board.

But the project’s opponents, including a representative of the Sierra Club, argued that their objections had been distorted by supporters of the development. And in often emotional pleas to supervisors, opponents argued that approval of the large project would almost certainly alter Altadena’s character and community flavor forever.

“We are a multiethnic neighborhood with a unique sense of community pride and spirit--a spirit that will be seriously eroded by the La Vina development,” Altadena resident Tom Cartwright said to cheers from other project opponents.

Describing the development’s “gated sanctuary” marketing as an “insult” to the community, Cartwright said approval of the project would do nothing positive for Altadena. “It will only serve to foster a climate of divisiveness and suspicion, highlighting the lines between the haves and the have-nots,” he said.

“It is not urban revitalization. It is urban segregation.”

Supervisors will continue accepting written public comment about the project until Friday.