Who’s Afraid of Big, Bad Porter Ranch?

They came prepared for battle, this upscale homeowners’ group, carrying protest signs and poster-board maps and handwritten speeches lambasting greedy developers and the councilman who’d let them down.

They were not about to let the Porter Ranch Development Co. defile their bucolic Northridge neighborhood with traffic and trash, and heaven help Councilman Hal Bernson if he tried to stand in their way.

But they had barely filed in and taken their seats at Bernson’s City Council committee meeting Tuesday when they were blindsided, hit with an about-face that propelled them to victory so swiftly it was hard to comprehend.

The development company was in retreat. And Bernson? Why, he was on their side.

They sat in stunned silence, listening to Bernson--who’d been the builders’ advocate for nigh on 20 years--announce that the builder “has agreed to my demands” and would make a series of “concessions” in its ambitious Porter Ranch plan.

Those concessions include a reduction in the scope of the project, the elimination of a planned apartment complex and a promise to ease traffic by widening streets leading in and out of the compound.

And, most important to the three dozen members of the Limekiln Canyon Homeowners Assn. who were present Tuesday: No new streets will cut through their neighborhood.

“We won, right?” one Limekiln woman whispered to her husband as they rose when Bernson dismissed the group. “Yeah, I guess. It’s over . . . I guess.” He looked to his neighbors for confirmation.

“So what do we do with these, have a bonfire?” another man asked, waving his sign, which read, “Save Our Quiet Streets.”

“Naw,” said his neighbor. “Save it. We might need them again.”

*

And so it was that years of community protest over what was once billed as one of the city’s largest, most important projects faded from the political landscape this week.

The project had been envisioned as the grandest development the Valley had ever seen. It would take 20 years to build and rival Century City, with its plush office buildings and fancy hotels.

“The $2 billion project will provide housing for 11,000 people and jobs for 20,000 when it is finished in the year 2010,” read a Times story in July 1990, when the plan was approved by the City Council.

“It will have 3,395 residences, including 2,195 single family homes expected to range in price from $400,000 to $600,000. Six million square feet of commercial space will accommodate . . . 10-story office buildings, a hotel and a regional shopping center” with a moving pedestrian walkway.

It was conceived as “a city within a city” that would generate $400 million in tax revenue for Los Angeles while it was being built and $38 million each year after that.

But that was then. This is now.

It has been almost 20 years since the developers first sat down with a citizens committee appointed by Bernson to hash out the outlines of the project that would consume the largest parcel of open space left in Los Angeles.

Proponents said the development--which would flatten the rolling hills above Chatsworth--would be an asset to the entire Valley, expanding job and housing opportunities and shoring up the area’s tax base.

But community opposition developed quickly, and controversy dogged the project at every step. Hundreds turned out at government and community meetings to consider its fate.

Nearby business owners complained they’d be forced out by the big, new stores. Homeowners worried about traffic and school overcrowding. Environmentalists said the project would increase pollution.

Bernson and former Mayor Tom Bradley were snagged in an ethics scandal over the developers’ campaign contributions, and Bernson came within a hair’s breadth of being turned out of office by voters angry over his continuing support for the plan.

But it was more than the community’s relentless opposition that did the megaproject in.

It was a faltering economy and a depressed housing market that ultimately made the grandiose vision look like a losing proposition and produced the scaled-down version on the table today.

The 6-million-square-foot commercial complex has been cut in half, and the only project on the books so far is a 60-acre shopping center. That’s less than half the size of the Northridge mall.

Gone are the hotels and high-rises, the apartments and moving walkways. And try selling a $600,000 home in that development these days.

*

During most of this long-running battle, the folks south of Rinaldi Avenue stayed on the sidelines. After all, this was all shaking out in the hills above them and had little to do with their neighborhood of 30-year-old homes and quiet, winding streets.

Then, six weeks ago, word began to circulate that the Porter Ranch project would not leave them unscathed. Under the new plan, the developer wanted to extend Corbin Avenue south, but only as far as Chatsworth Street--meaning it would dead-end smack-dab in the middle of their housing tract.

“I guess we didn’t really pay attention until it got to the point where the traffic was going to be filtered down our streets,” said 18-year resident John Thompson. “That would mean we couldn’t get out of our driveways.”

Telephones began ringing and letters circulating. More than 200 homeowners gathered at a local real estate office, where they pledged more than $10,000, agreed to hire a lawyer and settled on a name. And soon the “Limekiln Canyon Homeowners Assn.” began picketing City Hall.

On Tuesday, the association got its first taste of victory--however tentative and unexpected--and another force for community activism was born.

Columnist Scott Harris is on vacation. Times staff writer Sandy Banks will write occasional columns during his absence.

“We won, right?” one Limekiln woman whispered to her husband as they rose when Bernson dismissed the group. “Yeah, I guess. It’s over . . . I guess.”