SYLMAR : Activists Look at Planning Blueprint

Sylmar activists got a glimpse Wednesday of the latest version of a planning blueprint that will guide where the horses roam and where the condominiums are built into the next century.

After an hour of explanation from Los Angeles City Planner David Silverman, the 35 members of the Sylmar Community Coordinating Council could muster up few questions.

“It’s awfully hard to follow,” said Harley Booton, a horse breeder battling condominium proposals in his neighborhood.

City planners have tinkered with the previous version of the Sylmar Community Plan, drawn by a citizens advisory group, mostly shifting around pockets where dense development would be allowed. For instance, fewer of those developments would be allowed on San Fernando Road, but more on Hubbard Street, than the advisory group had wanted, Silverman said.

Most planning controversies in Sylmar swirl around the periphery of the plan--proposed condominiums, a potential police academy and a major corporate park. Some of the projects could be built before the plan would go into effect in 1994 or 1995, Silverman said.

He said the four years that it has taken to draw up the plan is about average for such a complex endeavor.

Others were less charitable.

“I’m very disillusioned with the whole plan because I feel they’ve dragged their feet,” said Charlotte Bedard, vice president of the Community Planning Advisory Council.