Norman Lear’s 21-Car Garage Upsets Brentwood Neighbors

Rarely has anything television producer Norman Lear dreamed up been greeted as sourly as the construction job on his home in the Brentwood hills.

“To me, it’s like gourmet food with a dead mouse right in the middle of it,” complains neighbor Ester Naeim.

The problem is Lear’s garage. It’s bigger than your garage. It’s built to hold 21 cars and stands 45 feet tall.

Lear’s neighbors in Sullivan Canyon contend that the structure, complete with a tennis court atop, was built in violation of city height restrictions and with misrepresentations about its size.

But on Tuesday they lost their bid to stop work on the project. The city Building and Safety Commission turned down their appeal, which asserted that Lear’s building permit had been improperly granted. That left neighbors bemoaning a situation they compared to having an aircraft carrier plunked down in their backyards.

Naeim and other residents on Westridge Terrace say Lear’s parking garage has ruined the aesthetics of the wooded canyon and blocked their views.

“We lost the peace and the [property] value,” Naeim said.

In 1990, Lear sought to build a parking garage/tennis court incorporating a home office and a gym on his property in Sullivan Canyon, a quiet enclave that abuts state parkland.

The building permit application said the structure would be 43 feet at its highest point above the slope of the hillside, under the city limit of 45 feet, and the permit was granted.

Lear, creator of such television classics as “All in the Family” and “Maude,” constructed the garage’s foundation but mothballed the project for several years, a delay that was extended by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

When he decided to start building again last year, he received another permit, but the rules had changed; the hillside height limit now was 36 feet.

Neighbors argued Tuesday that Lear should have been required to scale down the project. They said they had no idea it was so big until July, when the steel frame of the garage began rising out of the hillside. The department issued a brief stop-work order in late August after Westridge Terrace residents complained.

“We’re going to have this aircraft carrier deck out there. It’s incredibly ugly,” Gene Albrecht said.

“It looks like a helicopter landing pad,” said Rob Deutschman, the neighbor who lives closest to Lear.

In arguing for the project to be blocked, Deutschman told the commission Tuesday that Lear told him last year that his contractors misrepresented the height of the project and that it would be far taller than 43 feet. Lear attorney Allan Abshez agreed that the original application was inaccurate.

Former Building and Safety Department general manager Tim Taylor lifted the stop-work order after a week, ruling that Lear’s partially complete project was covered by the old height limit. Abshez said the tennis court meets the 45-foot limit at all but one point.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who lives on Westridge Terrace but did not add his name to the list of residents opposing the project, sent an aide to read a statement faulting the city for allowing Lear to continue building a project that does not comply with the new height restrictions under a city hillside ordinance.

Representatives of City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents the area, and Mayor Richard Riordan spoke in support of the Building and Safety Department.

Building and Safety commissioners voted unanimously for Lear as long as the project holds to the 45-foot limit.

Neighbors said they might appeal the vote to city zoning officials.

“We’re not going to stop here,” said resident Fara Naeim.