Connell Enters Playa Vista Fray

Long-delayed and feverishly contested plans to build Los Angeles’ largest commercial and residential project near Marina del Rey have run into yet another potential obstacle: mayoral candidate and state Controller Kathleen Connell.

Connell held a hearing Wednesday on the fate of a 70-acre parcel controlled by the state but previously promised to developers for a crucial piece of the Playa Vista development at the base of the Westchester bluffs.

Connell told an audience of more than 400 that--in her position as overseer of a state trust controlling the parcel--she plans to conduct an environmental review to see whether an earthquake fault and methane gas deposits make the property too dangerous to build on.

The investigation would follow a similar review already underway by the Los Angeles City Council. Connell said that, if the reports show the property is too hazardous to build on, she may propose legislation to preserve it as open space or a public park.

Hundreds of environmentalists and their supporters cheered Connell, who claimed before the meeting that the fate of the state-owned property “will in large measure dictate the fate of Playa Vista as a whole.” The anti-development forces said Connell’s proposed action could be a breakthrough in the two-decade struggle to preserve more of the vast grasslands once owned by Howard Hughes.

But Playa Vista developers said that the project is already well underway, with an initial 700 apartments under construction. They called Connell’s suggestion that the project could be threatened “unfounded speculation.”

In its two-decade history, Playa Vista has stalled and then lurched ahead countless times--through two mayoral administrations and three separate developers. It was too soon to tell Wednesday whether Connell’s intervention would be another detour, or a potential dead end, for portions of the project.

Others who have worked to save the adjacent Ballona Wetlands accused Connell of grandstanding in her campaign for mayor. They suggested that any attempt to set the land aside for public use could jeopardize a court agreement that already preserves 340 acres of the Ballona Wetlands.

Meanwhile, earlier Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter released her own proposal--calling on the state to purchase 332 additional acres so that all Playa Vista property on the ocean side of Lincoln Boulevard can be left as open space. The Galanter motion, which will be considered by the full City Council next week, would conflict with Connell’s by leaving the state property, called Area C, subject to development.

Playa Vista developers have said they hope to build more than 2,000 new residential units, 900,000 square feet of offices and 150,000 square feet of retail space on the property, assuming they can win future permit approvals from the city and other agencies. (Construction on the state parcel would be just a fraction of the overall Playa Vista development.)

Galanter, for 13 years the representative for the Westside district, said affordable units that will be part of the project are particularly needed.

“We do have a shortage of open space on the Westside,” Galanter said. “But we also have a shortage of housing, because we have so many jobs with so few places for people to live. I think this is the best possible balance of equally valid objectives.”

The much-contested parcel of land that was the subject of Wednesday’s hearing was first obtained by the state in 1988 to satisfy $75 million in inheritance taxes owed by the Hughes estate. Two years later, then-state controller Gray Davis arranged a deal that added 60 acres to a proposed wetlands preserve, while offering the state’s parcel to the developer.

Playa Capital maintained an option to purchase the state land, but Connell allowed it to expire at the end of last year. Removing all of the developers’ claims to the property, however, would take state legislation.

The controller said she has not drafted such a bill or found a likely sponsor in the Legislature.

Still, Connell said that the environmental concerns on much of the Playa Vista property have created a new dynamic that might allow preservation of the land Galanter seeks and Area C.

She estimated that it will only take the State Lands Commission and the Division of Mines and Geology a few weeks to assess the development viability of the various properties at Playa Vista. After the study, she will propose more definitive action, Connell said.

Already underway on the property is an environmental review ordered last summer by the Los Angeles City Council. One methane expert hired by the city has suggested that an initial construction phase on another Playa Vista quadrant could be made safe with expensive, state-of-the-art precaution measures. The city’s Building and Safety Department reported last month that it could not substantiate the existence of a fault that some activists had said threatens the property.

But many of the speakers Wednesday expressed concern about building another project that might end up like the Belmont Learning Complex near downtown Los Angeles--deemed unfit for habitation partly because of underground methane deposits.

Connell is not the only mayoral hopeful to become involved in the Playa Vista imbroglio, which has been contested for two decades. When he was still serving as speaker of the California Assembly, Antonio Villaraigosa arranged to have $25 million inserted into a huge park bond measure to pay for the purchase of additional open space at Playa Vista.

Voters approved the bond measure last spring, winning Villaraigosa praised from Playa Vista foes.

Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, said the money set aside by Villaraigosa and the Connell proposal hold out the promise of preserving more of the open space around Playa Vista.

“There is a tremendous need for housing but there is also a tremendous need for urban recreation relief and for urban habitat areas,” Douglas said. “Those opportunities and possibilities have to be explored and I applaud [Connell and Villaraigosa] for doing that.”

The political consequences of Connell’s actions remain less certain. The final speaker at the hearing shouted: “I want you for mayor!”

But some union activists in the construction trades, in particular, are certain to be unhappy with any action seen as thwarting one of the city’s major building projects.

And environmentalists have not necessarily had much political clout in recent city elections. Their favored politicians, City Councilman Michael Woo and state Senator Tom Hayden, lost the last two races for mayor to Republican businessman Richard Riordan. Galanter has been targeted by Playa Vista activists but held on to her office with ease.

“At a minimum this is going to get [Connell’s] name out in an area where people don’t really even know who she is,” said one Westside environmentalist, who has remained neutral in the Playa Vista struggle. “This puts her there on the biggest environmental issue on the Westside. We will see how many votes it gets her.”