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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Valley’s Plans a Rewrite Priority

No one thinks about what buildings their community needs until they learn a shopping mall, hotel or housing complex could be built on that vacant lot around the corner from their home – and by then, it’s often too late. During the next few months, residents and property owners will get the chance to eliminate most of those surprises as part of the city of Los Angeles’ newly enlivened community plan update effort, which will kick off in the San Fernando Valley. Planning officials said the city has learned from the underfunded and understaffed attempts they made starting in 2006 to update the city’s 35 neighborhood plans. Two Valley areas – Sylmar and Granada Hills-Knollwood – took nine years to get through the process and received approval just last year. In the future, the city hopes to take only three years. To do that, city officials have committed millions of dollars annually in new funding to the community plan update process and started beefing up the Van Nuys planning office. The city expects to announce in the next few weeks which of the Valley’s 12 remaining communities will be the first to take on the challenge. For both Sylmar and Granada Hills, the updated plans are definite improvements over the prior ones, according to members of land use committees of both neighborhood councils who went through the process. Developers who want to change zoning from commercial or equestrian properties will now have to go through a formal approval process that wasn’t in place before the plan update, said Cheri Blose, equestrian representative and member of Sylmar’s land use committee. “We’ve been able to maintain the integrity of the community,” Blose said. “We didn’t win everything we asked for, but we felt like most was being addressed.” Budget allocation California law requires cities to update community plans every 10 years or so to keep pace with population changes, but 29 out of Los Angeles’ 35 community plans are more than 15 years old. The City Council recently committed $2 million this year and $4.2 million each subsequent year to make sure the updates happen by its deadline of 2027. The money will boost staffing at offices overseeing three regions of community plans – the Valley, which at 12 also has the most number of old plans, the city’s Central/East region and the South/West/Harbor area. Last time the city pushed for new plans, the planning department had “shoestring” budgets and inadequate resources, which, in addition to the Great Recession, made the process more complex and lengthy, said Craig Weber, a principal planner with the city who will oversee all plan updates. He will be splitting his time between the Van Nuys and L.A. offices. The Van Nuys office has already started hiring and when done, it will have a senior planner, three planners, six planning assistants and several support staff, he said. “It’s like a 10 to 1 change in how we’re staffing these,” Weber said, compared to when Sylmar and Granada Hills plans were modernized. “Now it’s a dedicated focus. In a large way, the Council, in part, is taking this community plan program more seriously.” One motive for the City Council’s action is the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, a ballot measure proposed for the March election which is most known for its proposed two-year moratorium on most large-scale building projects But it also demands the city update its 35 community plans in 10 years, and start updating its General Plan. “It would be impossible to say it wasn’t a consideration in the mix,” Weber said, referring to the ballot measure. “Even if you remove that from the equation, there’s a desire to see these plans updated more quickly because of the (development) pressure the communities are facing.” Those pressures – in the form of proposals needing zone changes and General Plan amendments – in addition to population and job growth pushing more into the Valley from core L.A. areas, helped make Valley communities a high priority in the process. In the next few weeks, Weber said, the city will announce three or four Valley communities that will start the process first. ‘Blueprint for growth’ Updating a community plan can be tedious and time-consuming, but city planners want community input on how and where their neighborhoods should grow. That means helping residents understand what role community plans play in the future of the neighborhood. Plans are “the blueprint for growth change and development,” Weber said. They include growth goals and policies, a map assigning a use to each land parcel and zoning rules that guide how new structures and developed areas should look with specifics such as height limits, setbacks from roads or sidewalks, and limitations on specific uses. A parcel zoned for retail use next to schools may be made off limits to massage parlors or liquor stores, for example. Residential zones may prohibit single-family homes because the community wants more mixed-use development such as apartments and retail shops or eateries in hopes of making an area more vibrant, or it may require affordable housing. As an example, Weber pointed to a busy boulevard in South Los Angeles where a lot of liquor stores and motels set up shop on underutilized land. It was a mix residents weren’t happy with, he said. So, when it comes time to update that area’s plan, officials should create policies that encourage other uses and include incentives for those other uses, and add rules to restrict liquor stores and motels. Guidelines like those in plans help developers understand what the community wants, and whether to buy land there, said land use expert Brad Rosenheim, president of Rosenheim & Associates Inc. in Woodland Hills. “Part of our job is to help clients plan in the best possible way to create good projects,” Rosenheim said. “We also base them on what the community plan calls for.” That is the situation for much of the projects proposed in L.A., which has spurred outcry from housing and anti-development advocates. Not keeping up-to-date with population growth can also cause housing shortages, which drives up homes prices and apartment rents, Rosenheim added. Ultimately, plans and their updates are about creating opportunities for future residents and businesses. These days that’s taking the form of development next to public transportation stations and along those corridors to take advantage of the infrastructure, Rosenheim said. “You can make a lifestyle choice to live in a more intense urban setting and take advantage of opportunities there – jobs, services, etc., or you can choose to live in a more suburban environment where you don’t have the immediate convenience of services,” he added. “From a planning perspective, it’s about providing opportunities.” Updating Sylmar Sylmar, in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley, is horse country. Plenty of folks keep horses and want that feature to continue, according to land use committee members Blose and Peter Postlmayr, both long-time residents. Blose was part of the recent effort to update Sylmar’s community plan because the previous plan was horrible, she said. “We saw equestrian properties falling (away) like crazy,” Blose said. She said councilmembers would “turn a blind eye” and allow developments because there was no required zone change approval process. Also, new homes on equestrian properties no longer needed to comply with equestrian use requirements, such as providing enough room to keep horses. Properties could be “downgraded” to residential from commercial zoning; meanwhile, the city needs more commercial development, Blose said. There are several examples of residential complexes on former commercial land that were built as a result, including a complex of 90, four-bedroom homes being built along a swath of once-commercial space on San Fernando Road. “This is exactly why we requested these changes, and they were put into community plans,” she said. “Once commercial space is gone, you are never going to get back.” The developer, Chief Executive Shawn Evenhaim of Canoga Park’s California Home Builders, said the 5-acre parcel was already entitled for 247 condominiums in a five-story building when he bought it. “We didn’t believe that was a good project for the area, because to build that big of a condominium building, we would never be able to sell it, and apartments did not make sense,” Evenhaim said. He proposed the 90 small homes instead and got approval from the neighborhood council. The new plan update, so far, is having its desired effect, Blose said. No developers with projects that would need zoning changes have been proposed, she said. One developer who recently considered putting homes on an equestrian-zoned property changed his mind. “Would he have got it eventually? Maybe,” Blose said. “Would it have cost him a lot of money and time? Probably more than what it was worth.”

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