Playa Vista Project Gets Key City OK : Business: Agency approves revised plan to create studio and high-tech center near Marina del Rey. Financial incentives to lure DreamWorks are still pending.

A proposal to turn the Playa Vista development near Marina del Rey into a studio and high-technology center was approved this week by Los Angeles city officials, although financial incentives designed to lure the project’s most glamorous potential tenant are still pending.

A trio of votes by a panel of city bureaucrats called the Deputy Advisory Agency cleared the way for developer Maguire Thomas Partners to rearrange internal streets and subdivision maps that were approved two years ago by the City Council.

The action will also allow the firm behind the city’s largest planned development to create a historic district to promote the restoration and preservation of several structures on the property, including the massive hangar where Howard Hughes’ employees assembled the giant “flying boat” called the Spruce Goose.

The panel of city officials, which meets regularly to discuss tract maps and other planning proposals, did not consider a package of financial incentives, which is still being developed in hopes of attracting DreamWorks SKG to the property. The multimedia partnership of entertainment moguls Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg is negotiating with the city in an effort to cut utility costs, city taxes and the expense of roads and other infrastructure.

Thursday’s action, unless appealed to the Planning Commission, in effect permits the developer to expand the first phase of its project from 280 to 336 acres. The firm’s revised plan would create a 3.2-million-square-foot “campus” of studios, production facilities and offices, combining new construction with historic structures around a 7 1/2-acre lake.

The plan still includes construction of 3,246 apartments and condominiums, just in the first phase of a project that one day is expected to include as many housing units as there are in Hermosa Beach and as many offices as in Century City.

The intensity of the first phase had already been approved by the City Council two years ago, but the reconfiguration allowed some homeowners near the project to reiterate their concerns Thursday about traffic and destruction of what they said is a sensitive grass and hillside ecosystem. Most of the speakers in the audience of 150 at City Hall, though, spoke in favor of the project, with several noting that less traffic is projected for the studio than for the previously planned office park.

The tract map changes and other alterations were validated by representatives from a host of city agencies--including those responsible for street lighting, transportation, planning, building and safety, engineering and fire protection.