Warner Ridge Zoning Case

Michael Berger’s Column Right (Jan. 12) criticism of L.A. zoning in the Warner Ridge case deserves the tag “Column Wrong.” Like the Court of Appeal whose decision would require the city to rezone Warner Ridge for commercial use, Berger relies on the developer’s allegations rather than the record of proceedings at City Hall.

As the lawyer who since 1987 has represented the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization against the Warner Ridge developer’s attempt to rezone its property for high-density commercial, let me assure readers that they can’t trust Warner Ridge’s allegations in court.

Warner Ridge bought the property with a general plan designation for low-density neighborhood commercial (convenience store, professional office, for example). Had the developer sought a true neighborhood commercial project, the surrounding community would have accepted it. Warner Ridge instead proposed a seven-story, 810,000-square-foot complex, and needed to change both the general plan and the existing residential zoning to realize its ambitions. When the council in 1990 denied these changes, because the surrounding neighborhood on the same side of De Soto Boulevard was all residential or community college, the decision should have been treated as routine.

Because state law (which was first enforced in court by the Woodland Hills residents in 1975) requires that all land-use decisions be consistent with the general plan, the Woodland Hills homeowners proposed that the general plan designation for Warner Ridge be changed from light commercial to residential. This proposal went to the City Council, competing with the developer’s more drastic proposal to change the general plan to high-rise commercial. Here the legal trouble began. Because the city had allowed the Warner Ridge developer to write its own environmental impact report, that report rejected any possibility of a general plan change to residential. Thus, the City Council did not have the paperwork to document the residents’ proposal. When the City Council modified the residential zoning to allow more density than the existing residential zoning, that action was unlawful.

Warner Ridge exploited the city’s mistake, and the city attorney’s unwillingness to concede the error of allowing the developer to prepare the environmental report. Looking only at the developer’s self-serving allegations, rather than the full record of the residents’ attempts to bring the general plan and zoning into congruence, the Court of Appeal ruled that the developer had been wronged because the city did not honor the existing low-density commercial designation.

The developer has no interest in that plan, and it is the Woodland Hills homeowners who will be wronged if the Court of Appeal’s mandate to rezone the land commercial becomes a final order. Because of this injustice, and its implications for land-use planning throughout the state, the Planning and Conservation League joined with the Woodland Hills community in an extraordinary request to the Court of Appeal that it reconsider the case.

ANTONIO ROSSMAN

San Francisco