Plan to Guide Development of Los Angeles Called a ‘Disaster’ : Hearing: Dozens of residents complain that framework amounts to a blank check for developers.

A long-term strategy to guide growth in Los Angeles was blasted Thursday as a “blueprint for disaster” that will destroy quiet neighborhoods, clog roads, drive away businesses and overwhelm sewers and other utilities.

Dozens of Los Angeles residents from Woodland Hills to South-Central complained to the city Planning Commission that the General Plan Framework is not so much a careful plan to guide the city into the next century as it is a blank check to developers.

“Its whole purpose is to facilitate development,” Jack Allen of Pacific Palisades said outside the City Hall hearing.

“Life in Los Angeles will become even more unlivable.”

The General Plan acts as a long-term blueprint for growth and determines in large part how the city will develop over the next two decades. Required by state law, the plan is supposed to ensure that the city can house and employ hundreds of thousands of new residents without sacrificing the quality of life or jobs of those who live here now.

The city is in the process of updating its plan, which was adopted in 1974, to meet federal and state regulations.

Current versions of the new plan envision a city much as it is. Most new growth would be directed into so-called “targeted growth areas,” dense neighborhoods of shops and apartments connected by the emerging mass transit network. Planners hope that these areas will ease development pressure on existing single-family neighborhoods and allow more efficient use of costly infrastructure such as sewer pipes and power lines.

But critics complain that although the plan contains many good ideas, the city cannot grow much more. They told commissioners that the plan encourages large-scale development that they claim will ruin their neighborhoods. Many feared what they called the “Manhattanization” of Los Angeles.

“I strongly believe that the Framework is the worst thing ever to come out of this City Hall,” said Jeb Brighouse of Echo Park. “It should be junked.”

Critics said the goals of the plan are inconsistent with their vision of Los Angeles. They said more intense development will overwhelm infrastructure like streets and sewers and discourage businesses from locating in Los Angeles.

Almost all of those who criticized the plan Thursday were elderly, white property owners, most of whom will probably not be alive 20 years from now, when the goals of the plan are achieved. Planners, however, point out that the city they envision is designed for residents yet unborn.

“Whether we plan or not, the city will grow,” senior planner Emily Gabel said. City estimates show Los Angeles growing by as many as 800,000 people in the next two decades.

Without a long-term plan that targets development into areas that can handle it, planners argue that Los Angeles will choke on its own growth, much as it started to do in the boom days of the 1980s.

At times, the three-hour hearing got testy.

“Is this a hearing or a debate?” one man shouted from the audience after commission President George Lefcoe interrupted a speaker. “Tell me.”

As the audience applauded, Lefcoe admonished: “Oh, stop it. This isn’t a pep rally for a football team.”

Fewer than a third of the three dozen speakers Thursday supported the plan. Architect Katherine Diamond encouraged residents to look beyond their property lines to consider what is best for the city as a whole.

“We share a common responsibility to accommodate growth and change,” she said. “It is our future who will live here and we have to address that.”

A second hearing will be held Thursday at Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys, after which the Planning Commission is expected to adopt the plan and send it on to the City Council.

The council is scheduled to consider the plan later this year.