One Zoning Law, Two Outcomes

One is a house of worship for Orthodox Jews in a residential area steps away from well-heeled Hancock Park. The other is a gay sex club in a working-class, mostly Latino neighborhood in east Hollywood.

Both have been assailed recently by neighbors eager to close them down.

But the debates weren’t about religious or sexual freedom. They were about zoning and, more important, about which Los Angeles City Council district your synagogue or sex club is in.

In the contradictory world of Los Angeles’ zoning laws, the City Council has the power to use the same laws and regulations to shutter a shul and to keep a gay nightclub in business.

It’s a power that enables each council member to be a mayor of sorts in their districts, able to grant favors to politically powerful homeowners associations or advocacy groups. And, in a council as splintered as this one, zoning matters typically create that rare occasion when lawmakers defer to each other.

But it can get complicated, as it did last week when the council narrowly agreed to allow the sex club to remain open. The council in July unanimously voted to close the synagogue.

“These are very intricate problems when you think about sexual freedom, religious freedom and zoning,” said Gail Gordon, a Los Angeles attorney who represented the Hancock Park homeowners who oppose the synagogue and the Rampart Rangers/East Hollywood Neighborhood Watch group that opposes the sex club. “It’s an interesting juxtaposition of two types of freedoms the Constitution protects versus zoning.”

But council members didn’t pass judgment on those freedoms.

They didn’t have to.

The city’s zoning regulations allowed the council to veto the synagogue and sanction the sex club by applying the same law. Both establishments needed an exception to the rules prohibiting businesses or other institutions from locating in or too near residential neighborhoods; the synagogue is in a residential area and the sex club is within 500 feet of one.

The council members, however, said these were purely land use considerations--not deliberations on religious freedom or sexual orientation.

“This wasn’t about picking a business versus the neighbors at all,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who supported the sex club but opposed the synagogue. “But for the fact that the owners came to the city for a variance, people did not even know the businesses were there.”

Those involved have a different view.

“How does the council basically knock down the right of 13 or 14 people to pray together at 3rd [Street] and Highland [Avenue] and allow a sex club to exist near a residential neighborhood?” said one City Hall insider who supported the Orthodox congregation. “What am I missing here? Praying is a bad thing and a sex club is a good thing?”

In the two recent zoning cases, both groups first approached their council members. Congregation Etz Chaim and its rabbi, Chaim Baruch Rubin, sought Council President John Ferraro’s aid in securing proper permits to hold services in the white, two-story home at the busy corner of Highland Avenue and 3rd Street. The shul had previously been in the Hancock Park home of the current rabbi’s father--illegally, but studiously overlooked by city officials. When the elder Rabbi Rubin grew too old to hold services, his son moved the tiny congregation to a rented house a few blocks away, just outside the neighborhood’s boundaries.

Owners of the Barracks, meanwhile, sought out Goldberg for the proper permits to legally keep open the gay men’s sex club. It too had been operating illegally--since January.

Resident groups in both areas, meanwhile, geared up to fight. And in typical fashion for these complicated land use matters, consultants and lawyers were retained.

The synagogue hired George Mihlsten, a well-known downtown attorney and City Hall lobbyist. The sex club had an attorney, consultants and the backing of the city’s AIDS policy coordinator, as well as gay and lesbian advocacy groups.

Both the Hancock Park and the east Hollywood residents groups hired Gordon, a former deputy city attorney.

When it came to a council vote, Ferraro, who has been strongly backed in previous elections by the Hancock Park Homeowners Assn., pushed hard against the synagogue. He succeeded in winning the council’s unanimous decision to deny the congregation a zoning variance. The east Hollywood group did not receive similar support from its council member; Goldberg, who has had the strong support of her district’s well-organized gay population, lobbied hard for the club, winning a variance that will allow it to remain open, so long as the owners abide by more than two dozen conditions.

The differences in the residents groups were not lost on those involved.

“Money plays such an enormous role in the election of our council people,” said Geoffrey Saldivar, president of the east Hollywood group that sought to close the Barracks. “There’s an indebtedness to those who have helped you get elected.”

Walking around his neighborhood at twilight recently, Saldivar waved to children playing barefoot in front of run-down apartment buildings. He exchanged pleasantries with women buying fruits and vegetables at an open truck, and he showed off huge piles of trash, accumulated through a community cleanup event.

“Our group has been very active” politically, said Saldivar, a substitute teacher. “We have a tremendous amount of sweat equity . . . but we can’t provide money.”

The politics of zoning is not lost on the Hancock Park Homeowners Assn., either. Jim Wolf, president of the group of just under 600 dues-paying members, says Ferraro should represent those who elected him.

“That’s just part of the election process,” said Wolf, who lives four wide, tree-lined blocks from the synagogue in Hancock Park. “This was neighbors and homeowners asking the city to enforce the rules and regulations of the city.”

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The rabbi, however, has a different view.

“You can absolutely see [that] where it is politically in their best interest, that’s what they will do,” the rabbi said, preparing recently for evening services.

“When faced with the opposition of the so-called homeowners association, he backed down,” Rubin said of Ferraro. “He’s a politician, and numbers count, whether they be dollars or votes.”

Ferraro said he thought about the synagogue last week when faced with the sex club zoning matter; he broke with custom and opposed the variance that his colleague Goldberg wanted. He said he thought that he had to be consistent--a residential neighborhood should remain as such.

“Sometimes the community is right and sometimes they are not,” the council president said. “Obviously we try to listen to our constituents. In the synagogue case, there were those in favor but a vast majority opposed.”

Council members acknowledge their deference to their colleague representing the area involved.

“You do give weight to the council member who’s been through it,” said Councilman Joel Wachs, who voted with Goldberg to keep the Barracks open and voted with Ferraro to close Etz Chaim. “The reason you do is because if the arguments are good on both sides . . . the council member usually knows more about it and has spent enough time to really understand the issues.”

But should the council be the highest level for zoning appeals--other than court? (The Etz Chaim synagogue has filed a federal lawsuit against the city alleging discrimination and violations of the state and U.S. constitutions.)

Council members are protective of their zoning authority, a power granted to them through the 72-year-old City Charter. But with two charter reform commissions reviewing the document, the council’s zoning ability could be removed or reduced.

Council members shudder at the prospect.

“Absolutely we should do this,” said Councilman Hal Bernson, who chairs the council’s powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee and who voted to close both the shul and the gay sex club. “We represent the people--they elect us to make these kinds of decisions.”

The difficulty for the council, says attorney Josh Kaplan, who represents Barracks’ owner Roger Jamil, is the members’ need to balance competing interests in their districts.

To Rabbi Rubin, however, the council’s deliberations are decidedly out of balance. “What are we doing here? We’re gathering and assembling to pray,” he said. “It impacts the community so beautifully. We have families walking here--three, four generations. They say we are detrimental to the quality of life. We are causing property values to go down?

“It’s hypocritical.”