Hearing Reveals Growing Optimism About Playa Vista Project : Development: Planners are upbeat after a public session focusing mainly on the environmental impact of the 1,087-acre project.

Describing the proposed Playa Vista project as either a model community or a colossal boondoggle, several hundred residents and business owners turned out last week for a five-hour public hearing that underscored the smoldering debate over the development--one of the largest in Los Angeles history.

But given the magnitude of the project, the testimony at Wednesday’s hearing was subdued enough to suggest that Playa Vista’s developers may have finally turned the corner on their proposal, slated for 1,087 acres between Marina del Rey and the Westchester bluffs.

“To me, it was gratifying to see our four years of work (on the project) so well received,” Nelson Rising, senior partner for developer Maguire Thomas Partners, said after the hearing, which was conducted by Los Angeles city planners.

“We’ve got a long way to go . . . but this was a significant step forward,” he said.

At issue at the hearing in Westchester was the adequacy of Playa Vista’s 2,000-page environmental impact report. And Rising’s optimism was based both on the lack of broad, vocal opposition to the EIR as well as praise for its thoroughness from agencies like the Southern California Assn. of Governments and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Additionally, Friends of Ballona Wetlands--a group that helped derail a previous version of the project--raised no serious objections to Playa Vista’s new EIR after assurances that developers will take a number of steps to preserve and restore 261 acres of the wetlands.

“Our issue is not the development per se. It is the wetlands and whether or not the proposed development will have an adverse impact on the wetlands,” said the group’s attorney Josephine Powe. “And at this point, our preliminary reading . . . is that there will not be any significant impact on wetlands” if city planners require the same conditions on wetlands restoration imposed by the Army Corps of Engineers and state Coastal Commission, she said.

Still, Powe and Ruth Lansford, who chairs Friends of Ballona Wetlands, emphasized that their analysis of Playa Vista’s EIR is not complete. And some others at the hearing--including representatives of Heal the Bay--raised numerous concerns about the adequacy of the proposed development’s environmental study.

That study, which took two years, acknowledges a host of environmental consequences as a result of the giant development. Plans call for building enough condominiums and apartments for 28,625 people, and office buildings, retail shops and hotels to employ some 20,000 workers.

At the same time, the report says those consequences to traffic, air quality and other environmental concerns will be addressed through measures such as the wetlands restoration and public works improvements including better roads and an on-site sewage treatment plant for recycling waste water.

More important, perhaps, many supporters of Playa Vista made it clear Wednesday they support the project because they consider it a well-planned, exhaustively studied undertaking in an area destined for development.

“We can’t have no growth--not as long as people keep on having babies and people immigrate to America,” said Virginia Mulrooney, a Marina del Rey resident and supporter of the project.

But critics insist that the size and scope of the development will overwhelm surrounding communities, strangling area streets and existing businesses.

“This will be like a vampire. . . . It will suck the life out of nearby businesses,” said Salvatore Grammatico of the Coalition of Concerned Communities, a group of neighborhood associations.

Added Les Sholty, president of the Del Rey Homeowners and Neighbors Assn.: “Unleashing this--this ‘city within a city’--would create urban Chernobyl, ultimately destroying itself and everything around it.”

Others raised specific technical objections to the project and its effect on the environment.

Representatives of Heal the Bay, for example, raised concerns that the amount of development--and the paving over of open land--could render much of the property impervious to rainwater, leaving heavy rains to overwhelm storm drains and wash urban pollutants to sea.

But Rising disagreed with representatives of Heal the Bay, contending that the proposed storm drain system will be more than adequate to handle heavy rains. Similarly, Rising challenged the contention of many critics that the project will bring nightmarish traffic to an already congested area.

Rising acknowledged that the environmental study shows Playa Vista would cause gridlock conditions at 48 area intersections. But, he added, it also shows that a variety of traffic improvements would eliminate that level of congestion at 47 of them. The one intersection where traffic mitigation has not been worked out is Sepulveda Boulevard and Howard Hughes Parkway. Elsewhere, the improvements include widening Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards--the area’s main thoroughfares--to eight lanes.

Though the hearing drew a range of public comments about the project’s EIR, no elected officials attended the hearing and a representative of Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes the area, said she will defer her remarks until she issues a written critique on the report in the next two weeks.

At present, city planners are deciding whether to extend the comment period on the EIR until the end of December rather than sticking with the current deadline of Dec. 16.

Either way, planners will incorporate the testimony at the hearing--and written comments--into a final EIR on the project. That report will be reviewed by the City Council and mayor when a final decision is made on the first phase of the project in the coming months.