Proposed housing development at former Verdugo Hills Golf Course denied — for now
A project more than a decade in the works — which would have allowed for construction of more than 200 homes on the site of the former Verdugo Hills Golf Course in Tujunga — suffered a major blow last week when Los Angeles officials denied a zoning change required for the project to move forward.
On Dec. 10, the Los Angeles Planning and Land-Use Management committee, known as PLUM, denied changing the former golf course’s zoning from agricultural to low- to medium-density residential. The following day, the full L.A. City Council unanimously adopted the denial.
The project‘s developer, Snowball West Investments, plans to fight the decision in court, said Fred Gaines, an attorney for the development company.
Built in the 1960s, the golf course, long a Crescenta Valley resource, was shuttered in 2016. During World War II, the site was used as an internment camp for predominantly Japanese detainees. One acre of the approximately 60-acre site was designated as historic a few years ago.
“More environmental analysis is needed” on the project, in light of fire-safety, traffic, historical preservation and other concerns brought by opponents of the project, L.A. City Councilman and PLUM Chair Marqueece Harris-Dawson said during the recent meeting.
L.A. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who represents the district where the site is located, asked the committee to deny the project in its entirety for similar reasons.
“I have serious concerns regarding the potential public health and safety risks posed by the increased density being proposed at this site,” Rodriguez wrote in a letter to the committee ahead of the decision.
Gaines said the city was bound by law to adopt the zoning change.
According to Gaines, the community plan governing the area has called for low- to medium-housing density — the zoning his client requested — for more than 20 years. A footnote in the plan singles out the project site for increased density, he added.
More than 60 people attended the meeting to offer reasons they believe the project should not go forward.
Some pointed out that the site sits in a fire-danger zone, and narrowly avoided the path of the destructive La Tuna Canyon fire in 2017. Others noted the need to preserve the site to honor those who were interned at the former Tuna Canyon Detention Station.
“Are you going to change the zone to match the plan, as is required, or are you not because of the politics of the day and the roar of the crowd is [telling you] that you should not do that?” Gaines said to the committee.
Mary-Lynne Fisher, a member of a Crescenta Valley community association, suggested the underlying information that led to the project’s initial approval earlier this year might be outdated.
“Do not ignore the fact that the safety portion of the environmental documents, on which all the previous decisions have been made, was written several years ago, before the La Tuna fire,” Fisher told the committee during the public-comment portion of the PLUM meeting.
Gaines said the site, if left undeveloped, might be more prone to burn, in a follow-up interview.
He added that the project was vetted and approved by the city’s fire department with conditions that the developer agreed to comply with.
“Is it safer if it was built with buildings and streets and fire hydrants, or is it safer as brush?” Gaines said. “If we build nothing, it’s fire fuel. If we build the project, there is less fire fuel.”
Councilwoman Rodriguez questioned the sufficiency of what she described as the fire department’s “standard” conditions for the project in her letter to PLUM.
“The growing frequency of wildfires is far from ‘standard,’ and the city needs to do more to adjust to the new normal,” she wrote. “Fires are getting worse. They are not getting better.”
This past May, the Los Angeles Planning Commission approved most elements of the project, including an environmental report and site plan. The developer first applied for the project in 2007, Gaines said.
L.A City Councilman Gil Cedillo noted that the state is facing a housing shortage, which has driven up rents in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
“Every unit that we build addresses that,” Cedillo said during the PLUM meeting.
While he said the proposed project did not represent affordable housing, its denial equates to “hundreds of units of housing that will not be built.”
However, he still voted to adopt the denial of the zoning change.
Gaines said his client plans to file a suit challenging the decision early next year.