Neighbors resist LCF club plans

Robert Chacon

Neighbors are teed off about plans to turn lots on La Canada

Flintridge Country Club land into homes.

Gilbert Dreyfuss, president of Dreyfuss and Herman Investment Co.

-- the parent company of the club -- wants to carve 12 lots from 115 acres at opposite ends of the country club. Some of the space also

would be used for an administrative building.

The plans are opposed by a group of 15 homeowners who live

adjacent to the country club. Group members are concerned about

erosion, obstructed views, slope stability, privacy and environmental

effects, said Scott Harvey, who lives in the 400 block of Paulette

Place, a cul-de-sac abutting one of the lots proposed for the

development of three homes. His home is downhill from the proposed

lots.

The plan is not new, but a completion of separate projects started

in 1951 and 1981, Dreyfuss said. The country club was completed in

1962, and different residential tracts around it have been developed

since. The new developments are planned on space that cannot be used

for the 18-hole golf course.

Dreyfuss sought approval for a tentative tract map of the new lots

at a La Canada Flintridge Planning Commission meeting Jan. 26, but

the commission delayed a decision because of the neighbors’

opposition. The commission did not set a date for a decision.

The lots are large enough to contain houses ranging from about

7,000 to 9,000 square feet, Dreyfuss said.

“We are hoping that [Dreyfuss] will work with neighbors and

relieve some of their concerns,” Planning Commissioner Robert Levine

said. “Reviewing a project that is not in contention is much easier.”

When homeowners purchased homes surrounding the country club, they

did not expect more homes to be built.

“Our backyards will be subject to the effects of houses being

packed in too tightly, and we have so little green space left,” said

Don Williams, who lives on Paulette Place. “We’ve been here since

1966 and we want to keep our neighborhood from getting any bigger.”

The city is in desperate need of new housing, local real estate

agents said.

“We have so many buyers that they’re coming out of our ears, and

we have nothing to sell them,” said Sid Karsh, an agent with

Keilholtz Realtors. “A lot of people want to live here, but we have

no product.”