Deal OKd to Allow Housing Complex for Senior Citizens

The Los Angeles City Council, meeting behind closed doors, agreed Friday to settle a $10-million lawsuit and allow a three-story, 110-unit senior citizen housing project to be built on a prime Ventura Boulevard site in Sherman Oaks.

The action endorses a compromise negotiated by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky in talks with the builder of the Woodman Avenue-Ventura Boulevard project who had sued the city for allegedly stalling his development.

The broad settlement terms outlined Friday also revealed that Yaroslavsky negotiated a new 10% cutback in the project’s size. The proposed 110-unit project will now contain about 87,000 square feet.

After a deputy city attorney advised the council in public session to settle the lawsuit, council members went into a closed-door meeting, which lasted only three minutes.

Officials at that meeting said the lawmakers unanimously ordered the city attorney to draft the final wording of the compromise settlement.

“The settlement in concept was approved and now it’s just the fine details that need to be worked on,” said Vivian Rescalvo, a Yaroslavsky planning deputy.

Benjamin Reznik, attorney for developer Jama Enterprises, called the council vote a significant step in settling a lawsuit that contends the city illegally stalled Jama’s original retail-store project until the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan was adopted by the council.

Initially, Jama had sought to build an 87,000-square-foot retail project on the site, once the home of a small strip of retail stores, including the well-known Scene of the Crime Bookstore. The Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan would permit only 58,000 square feet of retail or residential development.

Later, in an apparent bid to appease critics, including Councilman Michael Woo, who originally represented the area, Jama switched to a proposal to build a 144-unit, 109,000-square-foot residential project instead of a high traffic-generating commercial enterprise.

During the public debate Friday, Yaroslavsky told homeowners who criticized the plan that he and his office had crafted a compromise project whose impact and size had been “reduced in a lot of ways to respond to your concerns.”

Although Sherman Oaks homeowner activists are generally pleased that the proposed project is now residential, not retail, they continue to oppose the agreement, calling it inadequate.

The proposed residential project will still force too much traffic and parking onto Ventura Boulevard’s already congested residential side streets, said Tom Grant, a Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. officer.

Grant said recent negotiated cutbacks in the project’s living space were only accomplished by slashing in half the parking the developer will provide, from 268 spaces to about 130.

Visitors to the senior citizen complex will now be more likely to park on nearby residential streets, Grant complained. The new proposal also will force many of the cars exiting the parking garage to travel on local streets, he said.

Virginia Shabaik, a Sherman Oaks activist, contended that the new compromise still shows that “Councilman Yaroslavsky and city government are more responsive to the developer than to the community.”

Grant and Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. President Richard Close have previously questioned Yaroslavsky’s good faith in negotiating with the developer because Reznik was a key fund-raiser in Yaroslavsky’s abortive 1989 mayoral race. Yaroslavsky has denied that Reznik was an important figure in his campaign and stressed that he has negotiated large cutbacks in the Jama project.