Homeowners Sue to Halt CRA Plan for Quake Repairs : Redevelopment: Sherman Oaks group is angered that the proposal was adopted despite fierce opposition. Plaintiffs are decried as ‘mean-spirited.’

Claiming that their concerns were ignored, a Sherman Oaks homeowners group has sued the city of Los Angeles in an attempt to halt a controversial plan that would use redevelopment powers to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged community.

The Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. claims in its suit that the City Council adopted an emergency redevelopment plan on Nov. 22 without justifying its need or giving residents enough time to review the plan before it was adopted, among other complaints.

But at a Tuesday news conference to announce the suit, homeowners said they are most upset that the council approved the plan despite fervent opposition from residents and business owners.

“What we want is help,” said Dee Gelb, a 25-year Sherman Oaks resident and member of the homeowners association. “What we don’t want is someone to come in and take over our community and not listen to us.”

The emergency redevelopment plan was the first of five zones adopted for quake-ravaged neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood. The plan seeks to use property taxes to provide residential and commercial loans and funding to repair public buildings and streets.

Within the proposed boundaries of the Sherman Oaks redevelopment area, about 200 businesses and approximately 500 residential buildings comprising 8,000 dwelling units suffered damage, according to city officials.

A private consulting firm hired by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency estimated that the properties within the project area suffered between $50 million and $120 million in damage that will not be covered by insurance money or federal and state grants and loans.

The 717-acre project will generate almost $18 million to provide low-interest loans to home and business owners. The CRA and the council would have limited powers to condemn abandoned and blighted property, a provision that has made many property owners nervous.

Lawyers for the CRA said they have not seen the lawsuit and therefore declined to comment.

However, County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the former councilman who championed the redevelopment plan before he left the council in December, defended the plan, saying it is a vital tool to rebuild the community.

He sharply criticized the plaintiffs for opposing the plan that he said is badly needed by quake victims in Sherman Oaks.

“This areas needs help, and it’s incredibly mean-spirited for someone who has resolved their quake problems to deny others this tool,” Yaroslavsky said.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in a Los Angeles Superior Court, lists 10 reasons why the court should order city redevelopment officials to halt implementation of the plan and declare it null and void.

Among those reasons, the suit alleges that the redevelopment plan was released to the public only 18 hours before a Nov. 15 public hearing. It was adopted after a second council hearing on Nov. 22.

Without more time to review the plan, the lawsuit says, residents were deprived of a “reasonable opportunity to be heard, of a fair hearing at which to exercise their administrative remedies, and constituted a gross abuse of discretion.”

However, C. Robert Ferguson, the Pasadena attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the homeowners, conceded that the city was not required to release the plan before a certain period but only to advertise the meeting date and location 10 days beforehand.

The suit also alleges that redevelopment officials failed to justify the need for the plan through a damage survey and included in the redevelopment area neighborhoods that did not suffer severe quake damage.

Yaroslavsky rejected charges that the homeowners were not given enough time to review the plan, saying that many of the plaintiffs were on a citizens panel that helped write the plan.

“There were no surprises. Absolutely no surprises,” he said. “No plan has more of a community input than this plan.”

Yaroslavsky also noted that when the plan was adopted, it was dramatically modified to address the concerns of some residents and homeowners who did not trust the CRA to spend their tax dollars and wield the power to condemn property.

Under the modified plan, a repair program for condominiums was immediately implemented but all other elements of the program were delayed for 11 months, giving the council an opportunity to abort the plan later.

The other elements of the program--the sale of bonds to provide home and business loans--were delayed until at least Oct. 1.