Appellate court ruling boosts Getty Villa expansion plan

For the administrators of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an epic drama turned toward a happy ending Monday. After years of contention, a state appellate court has cleared the way for the Getty to add a 450-seat outdoor theater and make other changes at its villa in Pacific Palisades.

For the villa’s traffic-and-noise-wary neighbors, the three-judge panel’s ruling was a blow, and many spent Tuesday poring over the 51-page opinion. Attorneys said an appeal to the state Supreme Court is possible. The neighbors’ attorney, John Murdock, did not return phone calls.

“We’re disappointed,” said Kelly Comras, who lives about a block and a half from the villa and is past president of the Castellammare Mesa Homeowners Assn. “The neighbors have never been opposed to the Getty per se. It was the increase in parking and the theater.”

The appellate court’s decision, which follows more than five months of consideration, overturns a 2000 decision by Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs, who ruled that the Los Angeles City Council improperly approved the Getty’s plans for the 450-seat theater when it waived zoning restrictions. The appeals panel found that the city acted within its authority.

With the ruling, said Peter Erichsen, vice president of and general counsel to the J. Paul Getty Trust, the villa’s conditional-use permit can be reinstated, and the organization can obtain building permits. It’s too soon to set a construction timetable, he said.

The 64-acre Getty villa site has been a legal battleground for nearly three decades. Oil magnate J. Paul Getty first opened the villa to public visits in 1974 -- without the city’s permission. Neighbors sued.

The result, a year later, was a settlement in which the city granted the Getty a conditional-use permit, and a neighbors’ group agreed that Getty visitors could leave the property via an easement on its property.

In addition, the Getty’s operations were closely limited, including visitor traffic. Parking reservations were required -- a measure that’s not expected to change.

As new conditional-use permits were granted, the Getty villa operation evolved into a museum complex of 134,000 square feet, 291 parking spaces and a seldom-used garden performance space accommodating 450 guests.

With the opening of the Getty Center in Brentwood in 1997, the villa was closed and Getty officials set in motion the $150-million expansion plan that led to this week’s court decision.

In all, the villa complex would grow to 210,000 square feet, including a new restaurant to replace the site’s old tea room, expansion of the bookstore and renovation of museum galleries for display of the Getty antiquities collection.

The new outdoor theater, which will replace the garden performance space, may be used up to 45 nights a year, outside regular museum hours. Plans also call for boosting parking spaces to 560.

In rejecting objections to the plan, the appellate court noted that the villa’s attendance, about 400,000 visitors a day through 1997, “is expected to remain static or to decrease” because of the villa’s new, narrower focus on antiquities.