Decision on Warehouse Complex Delayed : Business: In deference to new members, the City Council postpones a vote on whether to allow the development on 9 1/2 acres.

SILVER LAKE —  Some Elysian Park-area residents won a reprieve in their five-year battle against a coffee service company this week when the Los Angeles City Council postponed a decision on the company’s proposal to build a warehouse complex nearby.

The council agreed to wait until after its four newly elected members take office July 1.

Prodded by Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the area, the council voted to delay the decision for 30 days. That will give the new council enough time to view the proposal by the Secretary Coffee Service.

The warehouses would be used as a distribution center for Secretary, a Downey-based firm that supplies filters, machines, coffee and other related items to commercial offices.

Tuesday’s delay was good news for the three citizens groups in the area, whose members hope the four new representatives will be receptive to their cause for a more controlled development.

“The important thing is that we have four new people on the council, not the jaded group we’ve been dealing with,” said Sallie Neubauer, president of the Citizen’s Committee to Save Elysian Park.

Along with Neubauer’s group, the members of Elysian Valley Resident’s Assn. and Echo Park Renters and Homeowners’ Assn. say the project, consisting of five proposed buildings on Riverside Drive, is too big and too close to the park entrance at Stadium Way. What’s more, Neubauer said, the project is incompatible with the residential area it would abut.

But a smaller project is not financially feasible, said Tom Stemnock, president of Engineering Technology Inc., which is representing the property owners.

“We’ve waited five years, and it just goes on and on,” Stemnock said of the battle with the neighborhood groups. “They just don’t like to have large development in the Silver Lake area.”

In the past five years, residents have fought relentlessly with the developers about how and what should be built on the property, Neubauer said.

“The developer has lied and lied and lied to us. There is no reason to trust anything that he says,” Neubauer said, charging that the topographical map used by the proponents of the project is an inaccurate representation of the area.

“It looks pretty on paper, but it’s not what it’s going to look like on the site,” she said. “Anyone who goes down there can see it.”

The latest project proposal calls for 9 1/2 acres to be used for 127,000 square feet of warehouse space and 14,000 square feet of office space.

The plans have already been approved by the city Planning Commission and the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee. The latter group recommended Tuesday that the full council adopt the project.

But Councilman Hernandez said the postponement is a “common courtesy” to Councilwoman-elect Jackie Goldberg, who will preside over the Silver Lake-Echo Park District area. Goldberg, who will take the seat vacated by Councilman Mike Woo on July 1, requested the delay by proxy at the council meeting.

“She is the representative to the district and accountable to the people. . . . It doesn’t make sense for us to proceed without her,” Hernandez said. “I don’t believe Jackie would change (the current leaning of the council to approve the project), but we owe her the common courtesy.”

The council agreed to Hernandez’s appeal by a vote of 10 to 3, though Councilman Hal Bernson, who also chairs the Planning Committee, spoke adamantly against the delay.

Bernson said the five-year effort by the project proponents meets all the necessary city zoning and building code requirements and should be adopted by the council, sparing it further unnecessary delay.

Stemnock, saying officials of the coffee-service company are now “just about at the breaking point,” said he hopes the new council members, Goldberg in particular, will listen to their appeal.

“We just want the opportunity to talk and let (Goldberg) see what the project is,” Stemnock said. “There’s no question we’re going to get an approval. It’s just a matter of what the conditions are. And some conditions won’t be financially feasible for us.”