MTA Delays Vote on Seizing Land for Subway : Red Line: Decision on acquiring homeowners’ properties beneath Hollywood Hills and Studio City is postponed until Nov. 15.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority left 72 frustrated residents of the Hollywood Hills and Studio City hanging Wednesday when it postponed for a month a decision on whether to seize a subterranean ribbon of land beneath their homes to dig a Metro Rail subway tunnel.

“We’re between a rock and a Red Line,” said Marylane Farris, the owner of a home on Woodrow Wilson Drive whose subsurface property rights face condemnation by the public agency.

The MTA needs to acquire the underground rights to 96 parcels of land in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains before it can dig and blast a tunnel from its Hollywood subway station to its Universal City station. The tunnel will be 72 to 800 feet beneath the houses--more than 400 feet deep for most of the route.

In testimony before the MTA board of directors, MTA real estate director Velma Marshall said 24 property owners have sold their subsurface rights to the transportation agency for amounts ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Most have received $2,000.

But 72 others--some of whom call themselves “the Condemned”--have held out, complaining that the agency has not offered enough money or assurances that the work won’t ruin the value of their homes.

The property owners range from the famous--such as Academy Award-winning actor Martin Landau, the estate of the late actor Burt Lancaster, and Fraser Heston, son of actor Charlton Heston--to senior citizens who have lived in their homes since the early 1950s.

Nearly all expressed fears that the MTA tunneling and dynamiting would shake up their lives, causing vibrations 15 hours a day for 14 months that could crack their homes and scare off potential buyers.

“The offer was a joke--an insult. I think they can easily cut the value of my property in half,” said Boris Krutchensky, a magazine publisher who lives on Del Zuro Drive. “I’m not talking about real damage, either, but the fear. It might be irrational, but we have no control over the emotions of a buyer. In their eyes, they’re buying trouble.”

Additionally, property owners worried that it would take years to settle damage claims with the agency in court.

“When my house is in pieces, I don’t want to wait five years for the outcome of a lawsuit,” said Allan Rose, who lives on Mulholland Drive.

Marshall acknowledged the property owners’ concern, but said she believes they are overreacting.

“People have a fear of the unknown,” she said. “We’ve tried to tell them that the impact will be minimal.”

Charles Stark, subway project manager, likewise pooh-poohed the notion that digging and blasting will harm the property above, or cause sinkages on the surface similar to the sinkhole that has confounded the agency’s efforts along Hollywood Boulevard.

“This segment will have the absolute least impact of any--we are digging through solid rock,” he said. “The possibility of settlement is zero. Most people will be 40 to 75 stories above the tunnel.”

Some of the fear grows from a request by the explosives contractor for permission from state safety officials to store 10,000 pounds of dynamite in the tunnel at a time--a week’s supply, rather than the customary three-day supply.

The agency’s tunneling contractor is scheduled to begin digging south through the hills from Universal City in January. Stark said the contractor would like to begin blasting by July. Subsurface easements from the homeowners, which cede legal control of the underground route, must be wrapped up before either part of the project may begin, he said.

The MTA began warning property owners that it wished to buy permanent subsurface easements from them as far back as September, 1994, and began sending checks to early decision-makers in January.

It is not actually buying rights down “to the center of the earth,” Marshall said, but rather just a “box” the size of the tunnel plus five feet on each side.

In May, the MTA staff attempted to condemn the property owned by holdouts, seizing it without their consent by invoking its power of eminent domain. But board members instructed the staff to hold a series of community meetings to provide more information about the legal process, as well as concerns over the potential effects of earthquakes and the loss of ground water.

The meetings resulted in another 11 to 16 easement acquisitions, but many property owners were still dismayed.

Patricia Marlatt, a homeowner on Freedonia Drive, for instance, told the board on Wednesday that the meetings provided scant information on the potential effects on ground-water supplies in the hills. She worries about the 400-year-old oak on her woodsy half-acre property.

“They say there will be no impact, but they haven’t proven that--it’s only guesswork,” she said, calling their $1,000 offer of compensation for her subsurface rights “ridiculous.”

Nearly a dozen Hollywood Hills homeowners have joined in a larger, citywide lawsuit against the MTA that seeks over $2 billion in damages on behalf of merchants and homeowners who have been impacted by tunneling from Pershing Square through Hollywood.

If the board decides to condemn the property held by the holdouts at its Nov. 15 meeting, the MTA’s lawyers will quickly file condemnation actions in Superior Court. Meanwhile, the MTA would take immediate possession of the land and deposit the money it offered in a court fund.

Eventually, a trial would determine whether the value of the condemned land, based on MTA appraisals and independent appraisals by property owners. In the meantime, a property owner could settle, or simply withdraw the offered payment from the fund.

Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles County supervisor who sits on the MTA board, sought to defer the decision to condemn until the agency’s staff could determine whether an arbitration panel could be set up to decide potential damage claims out of court. The staff was also implored by homeowners to explore the idea of purchasing an insurance policy to cover any potential damage claims in the hills.