High-Rise Office Plan Is Scrapped : Woodland Hills: The new design for site at Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards includes a supermarket.

An investment team has scrapped plans to build a controversial high-rise office complex on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills and instead will try to update and expand the existing shopping center on their property, it was announced Friday.

The sharply down-sized plan for the 7.8-acre parcel at the northeast corner of Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards has won the support of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, said the group’s president, Bob Gross.

Under a pact it signed with Ventura-Topanga Partners, L.P., the homeowner group has agreed to “actively and vigorously support” the developer’s application for city zoning approvals for its revamped project, which is to include a new supermarket.

Previously, the homeowner group and Ventura-Topanga Partners had been at loggerheads over plans for a 750,000-square-foot office complex, with two 13-story and one 10-story building.

The original plan had been approved by city officials and was exempt from the provisions of the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, the blueprint for controlling growth along the San Fernando Valley’s main retail thoroughfare. However, the Woodland Hills homeowners’ group sued the city and the developer to block construction.

That lawsuit will be dropped as part of the proposed agreement filed Friday with Superior Court Judge Stephen O’Neill by the homeowners and the partnership.

Also part of the agreement is the commitment by the homeowners to support the alternative project.

“It’s a win-win situation for us,” Gross said. “It’s the best possible outcome for the community. We stood to lose community retail and have office towers and now we are going to keep the retail and get a new supermarket.”

Harris Toibb, majority partner in the investment group, said Friday that the original plan had been scrapped due to the collapse of the office space market in the west San Fernando Valley.

“We could have waited around for the office market to become important again--but I’m afraid I just didn’t have that kind of patience,” Toibb said. Developing a new retail shopping complex on the site “made more sense in today’s economy,” he said.

“This is one of the few times when a developer and a homeowner group have partnered on a project,” Toibb said. “We’re very pleased about this.”

Toibb said the settlement talks with the homeowners group were initiated by the development team.

Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the area, also has promised to expedite zoning applications at City Hall, Toibb and Gross said.

Under the revised plan, the existing 92,000-square-foot shopping complex on the property will be partially renovated and partially demolished.

The new project will have no more than 126,000 square feet, according to the agreement.

Toibb and his partner Howard Smuckler declined to say what supermarket chain they are negotiating with to locate at the site.