Homeowners Girding for Fight Over MCA Project

With the public comment period beginning, homeowners say they are gearing up for a long, arduous battle over plans to double the size of Universal City, during which every detail of the mammoth project will be scrutinized.

Groups of nearby residents and businesses are hiring their own advisors, including land-use attorneys and environmental consultants. They are poring over the thousands of pages in the draft environmental impact report released by the county last month.

And they are mobilizing their members to speak out against MCA’s most controversial proposals during the public comment period that ends Dec. 20.

“We have never been against MCA developing their property,” said Krista Michaels, president of the Cahuenga Pass Property Owners Assn. But, she added: “We will be there every step of the way making sure they stay within the rules and regulations.”

MCA hopes to add $3-billion worth of office buildings, hotels, shops, restaurants, themed attractions and sound stages to its existing movie studio, offices, Universal Studios tour, CityWalk development and theaters.

The project would add 5.9 million square feet of new building space to the existing 5.4 million square feet during the next 25 years. New parking facilities would also be added at the 415-acre hilltop site.

The local groups say they are worried about the added burden on already congested streets near Universal City if the development goes forward as planned. Noise, lighting, pollution and crime are other areas of concern.

That the fight for changes in MCA’s plan will be lengthy and complex is already in evidence. Many homeowners and business groups, saying they need more time to evaluate the draft environmental report, plan to petition for an extension of the public comment period.

“We need more time to review and absorb” the report, said Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn.

Lucente said his group will soon hire legal counsel and possibly other consultants to represent the homeowners’ interests.

The Toluca Lake Residents Assn. has hired attorney Jack Rubens, who recently won a string of legal victories for the Los Angeles Conservancy in its efforts to keep historic St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles from being torn down.

The Cahuenga Pass Property Owners Assn. is also looking for a lawyer. Lakeside Golf Club has retained an environmental consulting firm.

MCA, meanwhile, has no doubt taken notice of the lengthy delays that have beset another big entertainment development--the highly touted Playa Vista project for the fledgling DreamWorks SKG studio. That development has become so bogged down by lawsuits by environmentalists and local residents, as well as financing and management issues, that some observers wonder if it will ever be built.

The Universal City project has the added complexity of requiring approvals from both the county and the city. About 70% of the property is unincorporated county land, with the rest in Los Angeles.

Helen McCann, an MCA vice president in charge of the development plan, said she is still hopeful that the date tentatively set for the first public hearing, Dec. 11, will be possible.

“I think it’s safe to say we’d like to move the process forward expeditiously,” McCann said.

The county has received several hundred requests for copies of the environmental-impact report, said Geoffrey Taylor, an administrator of regional planning for the county. But it had received only one comment. That was from the gas company, offering to provide service to MCA.

While the local groups say it’s still early in the process, several specific points in the draft report are shaping up to be the most contentious. They include:

* Two proposed helicopter pads.

“Unacceptable,” said Patrick Garner, spokesman for the Toluca Lake Residents Assn.

Noise from Universal City is bad enough now, Garner said--although he added that MCA has shown a willingness to consider measures suggested by his group. “Our goal is to make sure that when the project is done that there’s actually less noise than there is right now, because the noise now is really a problem.”

* A lack of traffic mitigation for key streets and intersections.

The environmental report says MCA’s efforts to lessen the traffic impact would include some widening of streets, and the media company’s “fair share” of funding for improvements that are already planned for the gridlocked Barham-Cahuenga corridor.

“They’re just assuming that whatever is done to improve traffic as a whole for this area is enough,” said Michaels. “We’re saying it’s not enough.”

One area stands out as particularly troublesome. The environmental report says the development would place a significant burden on traffic flow at a new on-ramp to the northbound Hollywood Freeway near the MTA station, which can’t be mitigated.

* Crime.

Residents in areas around Universal City believe there has been an increase in gang activity since the retail and entertainment attraction CityWalk opened in 1993. Now they fear it will escalate further, and that added efforts by MCA to keep its new development secure might only push criminal activities onto surrounding streets instead of eliminating it.

Theresa Karam, president of the Toluca Terrace Woods homeowners association, said she hopes to get local officials and others together on her cable access show to discuss the issues surrounding the MCA project.

So far, however, officials have kept fairly tight-lipped about their views of the project.

Renee Weitzer, planning deputy for council President John Ferraro, said it is “premature for comments” on the development plan.

“I think we definitely support the studio expansion portion of it,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s planning deputy, Ginny Kruger. “We are concerned about the components of the project that do generate traffic. Whether or not the destination resort is a bad idea, I don’t know.”

Some homeowners say they worry that if the plan is adopted, it would give MCA a green light to build whatever it wants over the next 25 years within a loose framework, and without environmental reviews of specific developments as they arise.

But Seth Dudley, senior vice president at the commercial real estate firm Julien J. Studley Inc., said MCA’s request for approval of a 25-year master plan is the proper process for the development of such a large property.

“This is absolutely the way this kind of real estate gets developed. It would be ridiculous to go through the whole environmental process every time you want to put up a building.”

Taylor of the county planning department said specific developments proposed by MCA in the future would be reviewed to ensure that they comply with the adopted standards.

“The actual development standards are pretty strict,” he said. “It’s down to the number of candles of light that can be exposed so that you don’t brightly illuminate things on the side.”

Lucente of the Studio City Residents Assn. recalled one moment of shared frustration with MCA in working with various government agencies attempting to determine those standards. He tried to assemble county and city staff, Department of Transportation officials and MCA planners to discuss traffic near one corner of Universal City. The transportation people didn’t show, and the meeting failed to resolve anything, he said.

“That gave us a window into the complexity of the process.”

For now, MCA’s McCann remains hopeful that she can keep the development plan on track and complete the public hearings by late next year, after which the proposal would go before the county Board of Supervisors and City Council.

But she’s also realistic about the chances, given the grueling process ahead.

“It has barely begun,” she said.