Scaled-Down Building Plan for Bluffs Advances : Development: Commission alters coastal plan to remove all property east of Lincoln Boulevard.

After sharply limiting the area involved, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission has unanimously approved a plan to regulate building along a narrow band of the Westchester Bluffs.

The commission, in a little-noticed action last week, voted 5 to 0 to remove all property along the bluffs east of Lincoln Boulevard from the Coastal Bluffs Plan.

The action leaves only a narrow swath of land, from Vista del Mar on the west to Lincoln Boulevard on the east, subject to the development controls. The commission also weakened other restrictions recommended last summer by city planners to protect the scenic bluffs from overdevelopment.

Commission President Ted Stein said the panel was responding to an avalanche of protests from property owners, particularly in already developed areas from Lincoln Boulevard to Sepulveda Boulevard. “A substantial case was made to have east of Lincoln excluded,” he said.

City Hearing Examiner Don Taylor, who conducted a packed public hearing on the plan last summer in Westchester, said removal of the area east of Lincoln was “a significant change in the whole scope of the plan.”

The original proposal would have affected property extending inland along the bluffs for more than three miles, from Playa del Rey to the eastern edge of Westchester.

The proposal would have set strict limits on everything from the height and bulk of buildings to the type of landscaping and maximum amount of grading that could occur.

But the commission eliminated landscaping and grading limits as well as many other elements of the plan. Stein said other city ordinances will regulate those activities.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who demanded that the plan be drafted five years ago, did not oppose the commission’s changes. Her planning deputy, Jim Bickhart, said Galanter did not have the votes to prevent the commission from narrowing the plan’s scope.

The proposal now goes to the city attorney’s office for review, a process that could take months. Then it goes to the City Council for final action.

Galanter said she knew the plan would “go through some degree of watering down at the Planning Commission.” But she said it was necessary to get the plan moving through the process. “This has gone on long enough,” she said.

The councilwoman said the revised plan still needs more work.

Yet, in response to the hue and cry heard last summer and fall from her constituents, Galanter appears to have softened her position on development controls in the flat areas several blocks removed from the actual edge of the bluffs.

“The area on top of the bluffs is a developed neighborhood,” she said. “That’s a reasonable distinction.”

However, she added, “The bluff face remains very critical.”

It was the proliferation of cliff-hugging mini-mansions extending down the face of the bluffs that sparked Galanter’s early demands for development controls.

Some environmentalists complained that beyond the visual impact caused by large dwellings on top of the scenic bluffs, development also could adversely affect the wildlife that frequent the Ballona Wetlands below the cliffs.

While the plan moved slowly through the city Planning Department, the City Council, including Galanter, approved two major developments along the bluffs east of Lincoln Boulevard: a housing tract for UCLA faculty now being built and a major expansion of facilities at Loyola Marymount University.

The Loyola project includes construction of new dormitories, a business school, a student center with a theater and cafeteria, an athletic field and an underground parking garage.

Galanter said both the Loyola and UCLA projects included conditions to minimize their effect on the bluffs. She said she wants to review the commission’s action to ensure that there are no other undeveloped bluff areas east of Lincoln that need protection.

To the west, the revised plan will restrict the height of homes on the face of the bluffs to 45 feet, limit the amount of the lot that can be covered and impose requirements for side yards.

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But requirements for use of drought-tolerant native plants as landscaping were dropped along with provisions that would have limited grading to 10 cubic yards and mandated drainage improvements. Swimming pools will be allowed, but chlorine will not, because it could pose a threat to the wetlands.

In interior areas where lots slope uphill from the street, homes up to 45 feet tall would be allowed. Proposed building restrictions in flat areas removed from the bluffs were all but eliminated.

In commercial areas along the south side of Culver Boulevard below the bluffs, restrictions would be imposed on outdoor seating and entertainment, rooftop parking, satellite dishes and signs.

Sal Grammatico, president of the Coalition of Concerned Communities, a group of homeowners associations, described the compromise plan that emerged from the commission as “taking the soul away from the original spirit of the ordinance.”

Grammatico said dropping all bluff areas on the east side of Lincoln from the plan was “totally irresponsible from an environmental standpoint.”

Coastal Bluffs Plan

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission has approved a scaled-down plan to regulate building along a narrow stretch of the coastal bluffs in Playa del Rey and Westchester--but only after dropping all of the bluff areas east of Lincoln Boulevard from the plan (shown in striped area).