Neighbors Get Chance to Speak on Playa Vista : Development: The delayed public hearing will allow residents to comment on the huge project’s potential impact on traffic and air quality.

After a month’s delay, Los Angeles city planners will conduct a public hearing Wednesday on draft environmental impact reports that detail the consequences of building the vast Playa Vista project on much of the open land between Marina del Rey and the Westchester Bluffs.

The session, to take place at the Airport Marina Hotel in Westchester from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., will offer area residents and community groups their only chance to comment in person on the adequacy of the environmental documents. Written comments will be accepted until Dec. 16.

The twin reports released in early October provide the most detailed portrait yet of one of the biggest development projects in Los Angeles history. As envisioned by developer Maguire Thomas Partners, Playa Vista would be a city-within-a-city, where 28,625 residents would live and almost 20,000 people would work.

One of the environmental reports focuses on the effects of building the first phase of the development; the other assesses the impacts of the entire Playa Vista master plan.

Fittingly for a project of such magnitude, the reports themselves are massive. More than eight inches thick and 2,000 pages long, the documents show that Playa Vista will have significant adverse effects on traffic and air quality, despite innovative design and unprecedented measures to widen streets, install sophisticated traffic-management technology, and encourage alternatives to the automobile.

City planners had scheduled the public hearing for early November, but abruptly canceled the meeting after Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, community groups, and several governmental agencies demanded more time to review the voluminous reports.

Galanter, whose district includes the Playa Vista property, said it was “completely unacceptable” to have a hearing on a project of such importance with so little time to review the documents.

As a consequence, City Planner Dick Takase said officials delayed the hearing for a month and extended the comment period until mid-December. But he said there are no plans to further extend the comment period.

Takase said the public hearing will focus on the first-phase report, although comments on the master plan will also be accepted. After the comment period closes, a final environmental impact report on Phase One will be prepared, Takase said.

The master plan document will be updated later as planning for Playa Vista continues.

Maguire Thomas is seeking city approval for the first phase, which will include 3,246 residential units, 1.25 million square feet of office space, 300 hotel rooms and 35,000 square feet of retail space. Additional public hearings are likely when the city Planning Commission and City Council consider approval of the project next year.

Maguire Thomas wants to build a residential, office, retail and marina complex on land long owned by the late industrialist Howard Hughes. The complete project would consist of 13,085 residential units, 5 million square feet of offices, 595,000 square feet of retail space, 1,050 hotel rooms and a yacht harbor with docks for as many as 840 boats.

Copies of the environmental reports can be reviewed at public libraries in the project area, at Galanter’s field office in Westchester and at Planning Department offices at City Hall.