Braude Rejects Bid to Revise 37-Home Tract : Project: Developer offers to scale back Woodland Hills Estates. Councilman refers issue to land use committee.

A developer who has tried for six years to build more than three dozen homes on a mountain ridgeline just east of Topanga Canyon offered to scale down the project but still ran into political opposition Wednesday at the Los Angeles City Council--and now faces even more delay.

A subdivision map for the original development, a 37-home tract called Woodland Hills Estates, had been approved by the city Planning Commission six months ago, and appeals by its opponents--neighbors and conservationists--had twice been denied.

Still, developer Maj Rayes offered opponents an olive branch Wednesday, proposing to scale the project back to 30 homes. But Councilman Marvin Braude seized on the change to send the revised tract-map proposal to the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee for analysis, effectively dragging the process out for months more.

Braude also rejected Rayes’ request to sell his project’s 45 acres of open space to the city as parkland in exchange for funds earmarked for recreational purposes. The developer had proposed using some of the money to pave a section of the dirt portion of scenic Mulholland Drive; another portion would have paid for trails and a parking lot to enhance public use of the parkland.

“This move is anti-business--it’s the kind of unfair, costly action that has driven the city’s construction industry into the ground,” Rayes’ attorney, Ben Reznik, said after the council meeting.

Braude previously has said that he would prefer to see the developer build just 20 to 22 homes in a bowl-shaped depression on the property, and leave pristine a prominent ridgeline now the domain of deer, rabbits, walnut trees and oaks.

Reznik, however, said that even the 30-home proposal would be unprofitable, although it would at least “minimize losses” and enable the Lebanon-based developer to pay off $6 million in loans from the Bank of Beirut and Trade Commerce. Reznik called a 22-home project that includes no homes on the ridgeline “ridiculous . . . just out of the question.”

Rayes’ land-use consultant, Gary Morris, now must draw up documentation for the new plans and submit an addendum to the project’s environmental impact report. The addendum will then be circulated for 30 days for public review before appearing at the council’s land use committee.

*

Opponents promised a contentious review.

Joe Edmiston, head of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parkland acquisition agency, said nothing less than a vow not to build on the ridge was an “indispensable precursor” to his organization’s blessing. “That would make a marginally better proposal a tremendously better one,” he told the City Council.

Attorneys for the group Mulholland Tomorrow, meanwhile, complained that the developer had effectively withdrawn his original proposal, and ought to have to start the process over from scratch.

Said Mulholland Tomorrow lawyer Corbin Kahn: “This is a clear loss for us--a classic example of a shell game that validates the confusing old way of doing business: Making deals with council members instead of following a clear path through the public review process. This is the muddle-forward approach, and it’s wrong.”