Project Foes Criticize Councilman’s Role in Talks : Housing: A settlement is expected to allow a senior citizen complex on Ventura Boulevard. But opponents say that the builder’s attorney helped raised funds for Zev Yaroslavsky.

Negotiations to settle a lawsuit and allow a three-story, 123-unit senior citizen housing project to be built on a prime Ventura Boulevard site are nearing completion, despite vocal protests of homeowners.

Opponents of the project are also complaining that the sensitive talks on the Woodman Avenue-Ventura Boulevard project involve Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and the developer’s attorney, Benjamin Reznik, who helped raise money for Yaroslavsky’s abortive 1989 mayoral bid.

City Atty. James K. Hahn’s office has warned that if the city loses the lawsuit filed by Jama Enterprises, it could jeopardize the entire Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, Yaroslavsky said Thursday in an interview.

“This is not just a little local zoning case,” Yaroslavsky said.

The litigation seeks exemptions for Jama from the limits of the Specific Plan, which is a blueprint for development along the thoroughfare. The project is in the plan area.

Affected Sherman Oaks residents complain that the negotiated project will bust the restrictions set by the Ventura Boulevard plan. “It will greatly exceed the limits we so agonizingly won in the Specific Plan,” said Tom Grant, a Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. board member.

“It’s going to be a stucco monstrosity that won’t fit into the neighborhood,” Grant said.

The project sets a “bad precedent--senior housing is not what Ventura Boulevard is all about,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

The Specific Plan would permit a 30-foot-tall office-retail building with a maximum of 56,000 square feet. The negotiators, however, have tentatively agreed to a 35-foot-tall residential structure with 99,000 square feet, Yaroslavsky and others confirmed Thursday.

But Yaroslavsky argued that a senior housing project would not be financially viable if limited to the sizes set by the Ventura Boulevard plan. Moreover, the councilman said a larger senior housing project would generate less traffic than the smaller retail-office project permitted by the plan.

Homeowners have contended that Yaroslavsky’s personal ties to Reznik might be too cozy to ensure their interests are fairly represented at the bargaining table. “We have no confidence that we are being adequately represented by Zev,” Grant said.

“There’s a lot of people who are concerned about the close relationship between Zev and Ben Reznik,” Close said. “I believe Zev is doing the best he can, but there’s still a lot of suspicion.”

But Yaroslavsky said Reznik “was not a key player” in his campaign and maintained that his office has worked to reduce the size of the project.

“We inherited this project from Councilman Mike Woo,” Yaroslavsky said, adding that the JAMA site, prior to the adoption last summer of a new council redistricting plan, was in Woo’s district, not his. “When we got it, I put a stop to the settlement agreement that was going like a choo-choo train.”

Since taking over the settlement talks, his office has “made the project more palatable,” Yaroslavsky said. Under Woo, the JAMA project called for a senior housing project of 109,000 square feet with minimal setbacks from the street, he said.

Now, the tentatively agreed-upon project is smaller and has a front and back designed to appear less bulky, he said. “It’s a sound project. The concept of senior citizen housing is innovative.”

The idea of senior housing was introduced by the developer as a compromise proposal. Before the Specific Plan was adopted, the developer proposed a retail-office project on the site.