Planning Issues Offer Insight Into Secession

Who killed Chuck E. Cheese? In Woodland Hills, look no further than the neighbors.

It might seem benign enough: a proposal to open a family restaurant filled with coin-operated children’s games in a Ventura Boulevard mini-mall. Under the city’s old planning rules, the restaurant might have sailed through.

But Chuck E. Cheese’s case last year sparked a storm of opposition from residents living in a tidy neighborhood of single-family homes nearby. The complaints could have been lifted from the minutes of just about any San Fernando Valley homeowner group: inadequate parking, traffic, blight, noise and alcohol. Even the kiddie games became flash points.

The conflict--and how it was resolved--offers lessons as Los Angeles voters prepare to decide whether to break up their city. Of all the services that Valley and Hollywood secessionists vow to improve, the city planning process is already in the throes of a voter-approved overhaul aimed at making it more responsive to local concerns.

The secession measures on the Nov. 5 ballot come just three years after voters adopted a new City Charter that created advisory neighborhood councils and seven area planning commissions to make land-use decisions.

The threat of Valley secession helped drive charter reform, and the revamped Planning Department was a response to years of grumbling from people who felt they had little control over what was built in their neighborhoods. While secessionists applaud the new system, they say a smaller city would be even more responsive.

Appointed by the mayor, area planning commission members live in the area they serve. They are likely to know the places where projects are being proposed--and to understand the concerns of the residents and businesses there.

After the debate over Chuck E. Cheese erupted, it was the South Valley Area Planning Commission that settled it.

“The intent was to bring decision-making closer to the communities,” said Con Howe, director of the Department of City Planning. Among major cities, he added, “there’s no other system like this in the country.”

So far, according to a Planning Department report, the new commissions are working well. They meet twice a month in the late afternoons in the regions they serve, boosting public participation. The system gives commissioners more time to focus on individual cases, Howe said.

The South Valley Area Planning Commission has handled more than a third of the cases citywide. Its meetings often last more than four hours, occasionally ending after midnight.

Consider the fate of Chuck E. Cheese’s proposal.

The restaurant wanted a permit to serve beer and wine. But residents said their area was already saturated with liquor permits.

“Encouraging adults to become inebriated while children are playing in a restaurant invites irresponsible and reckless behavior,” one resident, Raymond Asher, wrote in a letter to city planners.

A commercial property owner at the mini-mall joined the fight, hiring a lawyer to argue against sharing parking spaces with future Chuck E. Cheese customers. Neighbors, already miffed about trash and graffiti in the shopping center’s alley, sent city planners photos of overflowing dumpsters and warned that a new restaurant would only make things messier.

And then there was the arcade--hardly a den of vice packed with violent video games, but nonetheless considered a special use under Los Angeles zoning rules. Opponents argued that an arcade could attract rowdy teenagers from nearby Taft High School.

The case went to a zoning administrator, who denied a conditional-use permit to serve alcohol and a zoning variance to allow the arcade in March 2001.

Under the old planning system, appeals of such decisions were heard by a citywide Board of Zoning Appeals. The new charter eliminated that board. Now, many appeals go to an area planning commission similar to the one that heard Chuck E. Cheese’s case.

“It was a tough decision, let me tell you,” said then-Commissioner Tony Lucente. “You want to support economic development, but on the other hand you want to protect people’s neighborhoods.”

Despite the restaurant’s last-minute withdrawal of its request for an alcohol permit, the commission voted down the proposal in July 2001.

“You’re answering to your peers,” said Lucente, who is also a Studio City homeowner leader. “There’s a greater level of accountability. You’re answering to your neighborhood. You drive by [the project]; you’ve got to live with your decisions.”

David Braun, one of the residents who fought Chuck E. Cheese’s proposal, said the community felt that its voice was heard.

“Like any political process, it had its ups and downs,” said Braun, a Pierce College professor. “We really put quite a bit of pressure on. It took a while, but we certainly felt we had a fair day in court.”

Praise for the Process

Even the lawyer who handled Chuck E. Cheese’s appeal had praise for the city’s revamped planning process.

“Even though I was on the losing end of that one, I still think the process is good,” said Benjamin Reznik, a veteran land-use attorney. “The area planning commissions have demanded a higher level of proof for projects ... I don’t know how much more local control you need, if you can keep Chuck E. Cheese’s out of a shopping center on Ventura Boulevard.”

So far, secessionists have not presented a detailed vision for city planning. Most of their campaign has focused on improving public safety, education and government responsiveness.

Lack of Planning

But city planning--or the lack thereof--touches on many of the secessionists’ complaints. In the Valley, rapid development in the 1950s transformed ranchland and citrus groves into suburban tracts. As the population passed 1 million in the 1960s, freeways opened more areas to development, and apartment buildings began to replace single-family homes, dramatically increasing the density of older neighborhoods such as North Hollywood and Van Nuys.

“Part of the Valley’s bad karma is it was developed before there was a lot of consciousness” about city planning, said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University, who has studied the Valley’s growth.

“It’s not that the city of Los Angeles did all these big, bad things to the Valley,” he said. “It’s just that people weren’t thinking ahead. There was so much open land that people didn’t think it was important to preserve it.”

In recent years, the city Planning Department has adopted a new general plan and updated 35 community plans. All the Valley plans are done, said director Howe, and only three others have yet to be finished: Silver Lake/Echo Park, Westchester and Hollywood.

Still, the city is handling more cases with fewer planners than in years past. About 15 years ago, Howe said, Los Angeles had 370 planners; today, there are 273. Meanwhile, the number of zoning cases has jumped from 1,100 to 1,400 per year over the past decade. Developers have complained that L.A.’s planning process is too slow.

Robert Scott, a Valley secessionist who served on the citywide Planning Commission for 10 years, agreed that the new system has helped empower communities. In a Valley city, he added, planning decisions would be even more closely tied to local needs because the city would be smaller.

“Planning in the city of Los Angeles is really a misnomer,” Scott said. “Most of the time, we’re dealing with exceptions to the plan. Some person wants to build an apartment building and the setback is 25 feet, but he wants it to be 20 feet so he can fit more units in. And we sit there and haggle about it. Now, that’s not what I would call planning. That’s more like case management.”

One possible model a new city could turn to is the Vision 2020 plan developed by the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. That blueprint envisions a series of “town centers” across the Valley, featuring shopping, dining, entertainment and other services, all within walking distance of each other.

In Hollywood--one of the few areas in Los Angeles that still lacks a community plan--secessionists also hope to create more pedestrian-friendly areas.

“We’re looking very seriously at mixed-use development, where we have shops on the lower level and apartments on the upper floors,” said Hollywood secession leader Gene La Pietra. “That will encourage more walking and a village-type atmosphere.”

Regardless of the planning system chosen, squabbles like the one over Chuck E. Cheese’s proposal are certain to continue, especially in pockets with active homeowner groups.

“The neighbors don’t want this, the neighbors don’t want that,” said Sandy Paris, an industrial park developer and past president of Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “That is the problem and, frankly, secession isn’t going to solve it.”

Developers’ Influence

What might change, he said, is the sway developers hold over City Council members, influence often cemented with generous donations of campaign cash.

“The reason [developers] don’t want secession is that they can talk to a councilman from San Pedro, who probably doesn’t even know where Ventura Boulevard is, and get his vote,” said Paris, who favors Valley cityhood. “But in a Valley city, they couldn’t do that.”

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About This Series

Today, The Times continues its series on Los Angeles city services with a look at how planning is managed. Stories later this week will look at the city’s record with respect to street signs, as well as fire and police services.

Additional stories from this series are available on The Times Web site at www.latimes.com/secede.