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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Quashed EIR Raises Questions

Quashing a proposed 5,000-home development before completion of the environmental review process is raising a question of whether the Los Angeles City Council is setting a bad precedent. There are those who, while not supporting the Las Lomas project, said that the review process should have been allowed to run its full course. But the city councilman whose proposal it was to stop all work on the review defended the action as being best for the city. Councilman Greig Smith said that because Las Lomas would have needed to be annexed into the city, a different set of procedures needs to be followed than if the property were already within city limits. Those procedures allow the council to do what it did, Smith said. “We are not against large projects when they make sense,” Smith said, citing Playa Vista, Porter Ranch, and the proposed residential and commercial project at Universal City. “Good projects will go forward.” Fred Gaines, an attorney with a practice in Encino specializing in real estate-related issues, said the city set a bad precedent for anyone wanting to advertise the city as friendly to real estate development projects. “The council decided that politics was more important than fact,” Gaines said. City Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose northeast Valley district abuts the development, said that when it comes to projects the size of Las Lomas the council’s action does send a signal. “I am sure anyone with a large project, it might give them pause,” Alarcon said. “It might also give investors pause.” The project proposed by developer Dan Palmer would turn 558 acres of unincorporated county land at the intersection of the Golden State (I-5) Freeway and Antelope Valley (SR-14) Freeway into a community of up to 5,800 homes, a hotel and nearly 3 million square feet of commercial, industrial and retail uses. Palmer sought to annex the land into the City of Los Angeles. Opposition to the project centered on the traffic that would be generated by so many homes; and environmental and public safety concerns. The City of Santa Clarita, adjacent to Las Lomas on the north, officially voiced its opposition in November describing the project as an “unrealistic land use.” Congressman Brad Sherman and Howard “Bud” McKeon also oppose the project. “This project never measured up,” Smith said. Palmer touted the project as keeping with “smart growth” strategies and was willing to spend his own money on traffic improvements, telling the Business Journal in a 2005 interview that those included new freeway lanes, through lanes or turn lanes, and bridge widenings. That there are the issues of traffic mitigation connected with the project is all the more reason why the environmental review should have been completed, said Valley Industry & Commerce Association Board Chairman Greg Lippe. With no impact report to evaluate, VICA never took a position on the project, Lippe said. However, it would have been a “win-win” for the city in the housing it would have provided and the jobs created during the construction, Lippe said. “I don’t understand not completing the process,” Lippe continued. “They [the council] have plenty of opportunity to deny or approve when finished. Without all the facts how can you do that?” VICA President and CEO Brendan Huffman added that the decision on Las Lomas was not the first time the council has stepped in to stop a controversial project. Last year, the council revoked a building permit given Home Depot to renovate a closed Kmart store in Sunland-Tujunga. The council sided with a zoning administrator that an environmental review of the project was needed. Home Depot later sued the city for $10 million but earlier this month put the suit on hold as it prepares a new permit application. The city has inconsistencies in its approval process for new projects: coupling those with the costly price of land and labor can potentially drive investors away. Even small infill projects, let alone a project the size of a Las Lomas, can take years to get approved, Gaines said. “The jobs to housing balance [in the city] is terrible,” Huffman added. “Now we know why.” Pursuing legal action is one option open to Palmer. So is scaling the project back and trying again for city approval. Keeping Las Lomas in the county rather than annexing to the city is less likely as County Supervisor Michael Antonovich opposes the development. The Los Angeles City Attorney recommended that the council continue processing Palmer’s application. That confidential opinion became public in December. Alarcon opposes the project but agreed with the city attorney that the review process should continue because the time the city has already given conveyed a promise of completion. He doesn’t fear the project moving forward and wanted the opportunity to see if there were potential benefits from it, Alarcon said. “My issue was the control and the way to control was to proceed with the process,” Alarcon said.

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