Residents Irate Over Blocked View

Glassell Park resident Marino Pascal is downright effusive when it comes to the hills that punctuate the northeast Los Angeles community. “The hillsides are beautiful, like in Ireland,” Pascal says.

Anyone who contemplates doing anything with the hills, especially obstructing the views, has to contend with Pascal and his neighbors.

More than 300 Glassell Park residents are up in arms because they say Public Storage Inc., a Glendale-based company, is blocking hill vistas by putting up two three-story buildings at the company lot in the 3800 block of Eagle Rock Boulevard.

“They’re so monolithic,” said Pascal, who was so angry about the storage buildings that he created a World Wide Web site to marshal opposition. “They’re bigger than the Berlin Wall.”

The controversy grew hot after construction on the nearly $3-million project began in late summer. Now, residents are demanding that Public Storage actually cut down the almost-completed buildings to two stories. Not wanting to be branded as anti-business, residents say Public Storage can reduce the height and still expand services at the Glassell Park location.

The controversy recently moved to Los Angeles City Hall, where Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg is trying to block the permit the company needs to open the buildings.

Company officials say it is impractical now to talk about reducing the buildings’ height. Public Storage has offered some compromises, including landscaping and other aesthetic changes to the buildings’ exteriors, but the residents are in no mood to accept them.

Public Storage officials, who were caught off guard by the ferocity of the protests, say they are merely trying to expand their longtime location in Glassell Park to better serve the area. They demolished some of the ubiquitous one-story, garage-type storage units and replaced them with two large storage buildings: one to house climate-controlled material and the other to store large wooden containers for the company’s pickup and delivery service. The buildings are similar to those built at a Public Storage lot in Northridge, which attracted no opposition, company officials say.

“We’re in the business of providing a service to the public and a return to our investors,” said Carl Phelps, a company senior vice president in charge of real estate.

“Any time you build anything, you affect someone’s view and you change the landscape. Our effort here is to improve and enhance our location, where we have been for more than 20 years.”

Nothing in recent memory has so galvanized the residents of Glassell Park, a racially mixed community of pricey hillside homes and affordable single-family dwellings east of the Los Angeles River, about five miles from downtown.

Freelance writer Robert Fowler, who has lived in Glassell Park since 1973, said of the storage project: “It’s a horrendous thing that throws the whole neighborhood out of whack.”

Motorists who get off the Glendale Freeway at Verdugo Road now have to crane their necks to see the rolling hills because of the new buildings.

“It was reassuring to see the hills after another day of work downtown,” said Eagle Rock resident Joe Cuziak, who says he gets off the freeway at Verdugo just to see the landscape. “They have a calming influence. Now, when you come off the freeway, all you see is those buildings.”

At the heart of the controversy is whether Public Storage acquired the appropriate permission from the city to construct the three-story structures.

Residents--supported by Goldberg, who represents the area--accuse the company of trying to get around public scrutiny to construct the buildings, an assertion that Public Storage officials deny.

The company says it got the necessary approval last year from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. In granting the permit, city officials determined that a site plan review, which requires public hearings, was not necessary because the net increase of the new structures’ floor space--after subtracting the floor space of the demolished storage garages--was only 38,000 square feet.

The threshold for a site plan review in Los Angeles is 40,000 square feet.

Company officials insist that they were abiding by existing regulations dictated by the parcel’s C2 zoning.

“Frankly, we assumed, perhaps naively, that our ability to confine our project within this standard was beneficial,” B. Wayne Hughes, Public Storage’s board chairman and chief executive officer, said in a letter to Goldberg last November.

Baloney, respond angry residents and the councilwoman.

They say the company’s computations ignore the fact that the new buildings’ total square footage is 69,330--far exceeding the 40,000-square-foot threshold for public hearings.

In a letter protesting the permit, Goldberg said the practice of granting credit for demolished structures is inconsistent with the intent of the city’s site plan review.

Also, she said the buildings’ intended purpose is that of a warehouse, which is specifically prohibited in a C2 zone in Los Angeles.

“Public Storage ought to be ashamed of themselves,” the councilwoman said.

Public Storage’s Phelps disagrees with Goldberg’s warehouse interpretation, explaining that a provision of the state’s Business and Professions Code says that structures like the ones in Glassell Park are within the definition of self-storage facilities, not warehouses. Thus, they are allowed in a C2 zone, Phelps said.

After filing an appeal, Goldberg claimed a victory last week when the city’s Building and Safety Commission, a citizens panel appointed by the mayor to oversee the Building and Safety Department, ruled that the department “abused its discretion” in allowing Public Storage to proceed with the construction without public hearings. It has promised more hearings about the matter.

Also, to close the credit loophole that Public Storage used to get its building permit, Goldberg introduced a City Council motion to force the department to use total square footage, among other things, in deciding whether to issue permits for future construction.

That proposal, if passed, would be too late to affect the storage facility. In the meantime, the effects of the commission’s ruling and any upcoming hearings are unclear.

Company officials say they have not been ordered to stop work on the buildings.

“Have we stopped construction?” Phelps said in responding to a reporter’s question. “In a sense, we have stopped because we’re almost finished.”

Goldberg, who is running for the 45th Assembly District seat in the March primary because she is prohibited by term limits from seeking another term on the council, says she is not done fighting.

“They don’t have a certificate of occupancy,” the councilwoman said. “I want them to know they’ve abused this community, which was respectful of their attempts to expand, by taking away views of the hillsides.”