Developer Reaches Agreement With Glendale
City officials announced Tuesday that an agreement had been reached with a prominent developer to end a lawsuit filed against the city over the largest proposed residential development in Glendale’s history.
Although all the terms of the agreement were not released, officials said Gregg-Gangi Development will drop its 1993 lawsuit challenging the legality of the city’s Hillside Protection Ordinance in exchange for a reprieve from the ordinance’s strict density restrictions on the developer’s proposed Oakmont V subdivision.
It is the second time in two weeks that the city has announced an agreement with a developer to end a lawsuit over the hillside law. The city recently cited mounting legal costs in its decision to allow Polygon Communities of Irvine to resume its plans for a controversial development in Glenmore Canyon.
Oakmont V was originally proposed as either a 572-home subdivision of single family homes, or a planned community with 623 single and multifamily homes. Either plan would make it the city’s largest tract, surpassing the 500-home Rancho San Rafael project, which was approved in 1987.
But under the provisions of the ordinance, only about 107 units would be allowed on Gregg-Gangi’s 238-acre property, which sits on steep terrain at the terminus of Country Club Drive, northwest of the Oakmont Country Club.
The development firm, a partnership of longtime local builders John Gregg and Salvatore Gangi, filed suit shortly after the hillside ordinance was adopted in 1993, claiming that the new law denied the company fair use of the land.
City officials said the agreement with the developer is not a settlement, but a “stipulation” allowing the lawsuit to be nullified while the developer resumes working on the project.
The terms of the agreement are expected to be announced today. But officials said that under the deal, the developer will submit a new plan for fewer homes. The plan will still require all environmental analysis and other city approvals before construction can go forward, officials said.
