Luke Perry Applies for Permit to Keep 3 Little Pigs : Tarzana: “Beverly Hills 90210” star wants pet potbellied swine at home. A hearing will decide if they are detrimental to neighborhood.

Teen heartthrob Luke Perry, the bad boy of television’s “Beverly Hills 90210,” has appealed to the city of Los Angeles for permission to keep his pets, three Vietnamese potbellied pigs, at his Tarzana home.

“He’s applying for this permit so he can keep his pigs, his pets, at his house,” said Leegie Parker, the realtor who sold Perry his home and who filed for a permit on the behalf of the star.

Keeping potbellied pigs, which at the height of their fad in 1991 fetched up to $10,000 each, requires a special permit in Los Angeles. When the fad faded, many of the pigs, which, according to advocates, are smaller and cleaner than the common barnyard variety of swine, began turning up as orphans in animal shelters across the country.

Potbelly breeders and faddists have persuaded more than two dozen California cities, including Beverly Hills and Burbank, to allow the animals.

At least one of Perry’s neighbors had no objection to the designer pets.

“It doesn’t bother me,” said one neighbor. “We have peacocks in the neighborhood that are much more annoying.”

There have been previous reports of people keeping pigs in the Valley, said Cindy Miscikowski, planning deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude.

“I think this is the first application I’ve seen (for pig keeping) in the valley,” Miscikowski said.

Miscikowski said she has received no complaints about Perry’s pigs.

At issue in a public hearing set for July 16 will be whether the pigs are a detriment to Perry’s neighborhood, which is zoned for mixed residential and agricultural uses, said Associate Zoning Administrator Albert Landini.

“What this ordinance envisioned, when it was first written, was not the little potbellied pigs,” Landini said. “It envisioned porkers--the big ones--like you’d get on an Indiana or Nebraska pig farm.”

Cyd Levin, Perry’s manager, said from New York that she did not know whether her client had filed for the permit.

“I’m Luke’s manager,” she said. “Personally, I don’t know--that’s not my business.”

Perry, now on location for an upcoming film, was not available for comment, Levin said.