Condo Project OKd Despite Protests

Over the vocal objection of more than a dozen residents, a City Council panel approved a plan Tuesday to build 48 condos at the site of a defunct hospital in West Hills.

Councilman Hal Bernson, chairman of the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, told the disappointed homeowners that he was supporting the development to prevent the former home of West Park Hospital from being used for something far worse--such as the 475 apartment units that the 4.37-acre property is now zoned for.

“I hate to tell you folks, but I’m on my last go-round here,” said Bernson, a 21-year council veteran who won reelection to his final term in April. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in four years . . . My concern is what we could get if we don’t get something desirable and passable. That weighs heavily on my mind.”

But residents, many of them elderly homeowners who have lived in the neighborhood for decades, said they felt they were being steam-rolled by powerful city interests. They pointed to the project’s lobbyist, Tom Stemnock, a former zoning administrator in the city’s Planning Department, and the man Stemnock said intends to develop the property, attorney and Harbor Commissioner Ted Stein.

“It appears that a decision has been made,” said Michael Cohen, who lives on Farralone Avenue near the complex proposed for 22141 Roscoe Blvd. “Then we find out that all the players are current or former city employees.”

The applicant, Encino-based Triad Healthcare, is seeking permission to build two-story condominiums in a neighborhood of one-story, single-family houses. Cohen and other opponents of the plan contend that the city is wrongly classifying the development as single-family housing because the units will be detached.

Neighbors have gathered 951 signatures on a petition opposing the project, which they fear will increase traffic, burden local schools, and put additional pressure on a troubled sewer system already prone to overflows.

Despite an hour of testimony against the proposal, the committee unanimously passed the plan, with a few changes, and agreed to send it to the full council in two weeks. The modifications include adding landscaping and lowering a wall outside the planned complex.

Bernson acknowledged the strong opposition to the project, but cautioned residents to be realistic about their options.

“I would love to have somebody put 19 homes there but that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We have to think about the potential, about what we can get and what we could get.”