Homeowners Group Vows to Fight Revised Plan for Glenoaks Canyon : Development: Like the initial, rejected proposal, the 24-house subdivision would require the razing of a ridgeline.

Leaders of a Glendale homeowners group have vowed to fight a revised subdivision proposal for Glenoaks Canyon that city planning officials say is only slightly different than an original tract plan rejected in December by the City Council.

Developer Ken Doty, whose proposal to build 25 houses off Sleepy Hollow Place was adamantly opposed by the Glenoaks Canyon Homeowners Assn. and turned down by the Glendale Planning Commission and City Council, has submitted a revised plan for a 24-house subdivision, said Jim Glaser, Glendale’s planning administrator.

Glaser said the revised plan eliminates one lot, reduces grading in one area of the subdivision and makes cuts to the canyon’s slopes less visible. But, he said, the proposal otherwise is the same as the 25-house plan and still requires the razing of a ridgeline--a step that has drawn the most ire from homeowners, Glaser said.

The council on Dec. 4 voted 3 to 2 to reject the 25-house plan. Members also voted not to certify its environmental review, but later reversed that decision and certified the report.

Because the new proposal is so similar to the original, it most likely can use the original environmental report, Glaser said. That could save Doty six months to a year in processing the alternative plan, officials have said.

The Environmental and Planning Board in several weeks will determine whether the report applies to the new plan. The Planning Commission and council then will hold public hearings on the proposal, Glaser said.

Doty refused to answer questions about his revised plan, but in a prepared statement, said: “It is my hope in meeting with the Planning Department and the homeowners association that a satisfactory agreement acceptable to all can be forthcoming prior to the time it reaches the City Council.”

Glenoaks Canyon residents said they once again will organize to oppose Doty’s development plans. Scores of homeowners attended hearings last year on the 25-house proposal.

“We’ll do everything in our power to kill it, to make him come to his senses and react to what the City Council told him and what the homeowners feel,” said Dave Weaver, president of the Glenoaks Canyon Homeowners Assn. “I have told his representatives that when he’s got a new proposal, we’d be happy to sit down with him. But if it’s the same old thing, we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

“We are not against development. We are against development which ignores aesthetics and is not sensitive,” said Joe Bridges, the group’s vice president. “We’ll fight this one just as hard as the first.”

Weaver and Bridges said they believed Doty might have interpreted the council’s decision to certify the environmental report as a sign that council members were willing to accept a tract similar to the 25-house plan.

But John M. Gantus, Doty’s attorney, and Mayor Ginger Bremberg disputed that claim.

Bremberg, who originally voted to reject the environmental report but later voted to certify it, said she still opposes any proposal that will affect the canyon’s ridgeline.

“I have not seen the new plans, but it sounds like there’s not a lot different from the plan I voted against before,” Bremberg said. “I thought that we were very clear that cutting down the ridgelines and that type of density . . . was not acceptable.”