Marr Ranch Plans Will Be Revised

After hearing neighboring homeowners attack his plans to build a housing development on Marr Ranch in Simi Valley’s northeastern hills, developer Robert Friedman went back to the drawing board Tuesday to redraw the plans.

A public hearing on the project Monday had lasted almost to midnight as City Council members hammered out potential solutions with Friedman to the problems posed by neighbors and city planners.

The council asked city staff to bring a revised development agreement to the next public hearing on Dec. 16. The revisions would require Friedman to connect Flanagan Drive to the development with 1,000 feet of new road and to save seven old valley oak trees that lie in the path of the new neighborhood’s proposed roads. They would also set up a homeowners’ association, instead of an assessment district, to pay for landscaping the hilly property.

But the council also asked Friedman to redraw the site plans to avoid building houses on steeper hillsides than allowed in the city’s zealously guarded hillside protection ordinance.

In an interview Tuesday, Friedman said he can redraft the blueprints, but that the revisions might upset neighbors and hillside-construction foes even more. More of the houses will be visible from the upper reaches of existing hillside neighborhoods, and some hills would have to be graded, he said.

“If they think that not touching anything that’s a 20% slope is more important than grading or showing houses where they’re more visible to everyone, that’s what we’ll do,” he said. Of the revisions, he said, “It’s frustrating, but it’s kind of routine. It happens all the time.”