City Approves Plan to Guide Warner Center : Development: The council will take a final vote next week. The proposal has been in the making for eight years. It permits 35.7 million square feet of construction and calls for traffic mitigation measures.

A long-awaited plan to guide development and traffic improvements at Warner Center was tentatively approved Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council.

Following a short discussion, the council voted 13 to 1 in favor of the Warner Center Specific Plan. Only Councilman Ernani Bernardi opposed it, saying it allows too much development.

The plan will come up for a final vote next week.

The result of nearly eight years of study and negotiations, the plan will permit 35.7 million square feet of development in the 1,100-acre center, bounded by Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Vanowen Street, De Soto Avenue and the Ventura Freeway. The total includes 15 million square feet already built.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the area but will be replaced next week by Councilwoman-elect Laura Chick, said she was happy that the plan will be adopted before she leaves.

“I’m pleased to have it move along while I’m still in office,” she said.

During testimony before the council, Picus said the plan is the result of intense negotiations among city planners, residents and Warner Center developers.

“It’s a consensus plan on which agreement has been reached,” she said.

Private land-use consultant David Grannis, who represents a consortium of property owners in the area, said he supported adoption of the document.

The only opposition to the plan came from Elizabeth Harris, a representative of the Los Angeles Unified School District, who said the district is concerned about the impact that noise and pollution from Warner Center traffic will have on two nearby schools. Harris urged the council to delay adoption of the plan until the district’s concerns were fully studied.

The plan allows development to proceed only if traffic mitigation measures are implemented and only after public reviews following completion of each phase of construction.

Picus initially backed a plan to permit only 26 million square feet of development in Warner Center. That version, however, was discarded by the city’s Planning Commission, whose members contended that its restrictions and high cost would stop any new development in the area.

The plan adopted Wednesday will require developers to pay a minimum of $4,907 for each auto trip the city estimates that the developer’s project generate daily. The money is to be used to pay for transportation improvements designed to stabilize traffic conditions in the area.

Initially, the fees were set at about $16,000 but were lowered after developers complained. Some proposed traffic improvements--such as elevated streets--were eliminated from the plan, reducing its cost.

The fees on new Warner Center projects will produce an estimated $168 million to help pay for $673 million in traffic improvements.