SUN VALLEY : Restaurant Gains Panel’s Support

At its meeting next week, the Los Angeles City Council should allow Tommy’s of Sun Valley to stay open if management can control noise and loitering, a committee has recommended.

For more than a year, neighbors have filed reports of fighting, late-night noise, gunshots, and patrons lighting fires at the restaurant on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, according to city records. Sometimes as many as 100 to 200 people were on the property at one time, said Daniel Green, associate zoning administrator for the city. He said beer cans and glass bottles littered the parking lot in the morning.

The council’s Planning Committee recommended last week that the restaurant be required to close at 10 p.m., rather than the current 2 a.m. The new conditions should remain in effect for six months, when the city will review the business again, the committee recommended.

Improvements on the property, such as fencing, a gate to lock up trash bins, landscaping and painting parking spaces, all have to be done within 60 days. Pay telephones would also be removed.

The committee reversed a decision by the Board of Zoning Appeals to shut down the business as a public nuisance, but imposed the conditions, Green said.

“He’s cleaning up the place,” Green said of the owner. “He’s painting over the graffiti and he is trying to make it an asset to he community. If the business was completely shut down you would have a piece of property that would be useless.”

The manager of the property, Olaf Gebhart, did not return telephone calls and the owner, Shahram Zahoury, also could not be reached for comment. The restaurant is not affiliated with the Original Tommy’s restaurant chain.

The restaurant began as a snack bar at a miniature golf course. The golf course closed, but the restaurant expanded and was granted a variance in 1976, on the stipulation that the residential neighborhood not be disturbed.