Local business groups, led by downtown L.A.’s Central City Association, have begun a campaign against a likely ballot measure next year that would make it tougher to get approvals for development projects in the city of Los Angeles.

The Coalition to Preserve L.A., a group of neighborhood activists – many in Hollywood and including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation – filed an initiative last month that would place a two-year moratorium on major developments and ban most projects that require zone changes or variances from local community plans. The AIDS foundation joined this effort because it opposes the Hollywood Palladium development project next door to its headquarters.

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative will need to get more than 61,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot.

Initiative proponents argue that the city has allowed too many projects to go forward that violate restrictions on community plans, creating traffic nightmares and causing general declines in the quality of life in many neighborhoods.

But the Central City Association, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and Valley Industry and Commerce Association, along with industry groups such as the Building Industry of Southern California, argue that if the initiative is approved, it would virtually halt development in the city for two years and severely limit development proposals that could go forward after that. They say that would cost thousands of jobs and worsen an already critical housing shortage.

“CCA strongly opposes this deeply troubling proposal that will cost thousands of good jobs, worsen the housing crisis and cripple the local economy,” said the association’s chief executive, Carol Schatz, in an email alert to members.

But if history is any guide, the association and its business allies will face an uphill battle against increasingly mobilized neighborhood activists seeking to slow or halt major projects.

In the mid-1980s, neighborhood activists expressing nearly identical concerns and with the backing of then-Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky, qualified an initiative for the November 1986 ballot that placed strict height and size limits on high-rises throughout most of Los Angeles. The measure excluded certain high-density areas such as downtown, Century City, Warner Center and Hollywood. Despite vocal opposition and heavy spending from the same business groups opposing the current initiative, Proposition U passed by a resounding 2-to-1 margin. As a result, most of the city – with the aforementioned exceptions – has seen no new high rises in 30 years.

The new initiative will almost certainly garner the necessary 61,000 signatures. Then, the City Council will have a chance to adopt the provisions of the measure as an ordinance or let it go on the ballot.

If the measure does go to voters, Schatz said things are different this time.

“Los Angeles is now more diverse and less affordable,” she said. “Housing prices have outpaced wages and we need new jobs and housing production to close the gap. Angelenos know this and will not support an initiative based on exclusion and fear.”

Strange bedfellows

Over the past decade, L.A. hotel owners and unions have fought fiercely at almost every turn, clashing over wage laws and organizing drives.

But now they are on the same side in the latest battleground involving hotels: the city of L.A.’s attempt to regulate short-term rentals, principally Airbnb Inc. of San Francisco.

Lobbying on both sides has increased as the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee will take up the matter in the next few months.

The Hotel Association of Los Angeles, representing most of the major hotels in the city, is pushing for regulation, claiming that many Airbnb rentals function as de facto hotels without having to comply with many of the regulations that hotels face – and cut into hotels’ business.

Joining their call are several union locals, including UniteHERE Local 11 – the same union that has repeatedly tangled with the hotel association over the years.

Union spokeswoman Daria Ovide said the main issue for members is the prospect of Airbnb and other short-term rental operators taking available rental housing off the market. Also, UniteHERE wants to maintain labor, health and other standards in the hospitality industry.

Hotel association President Robert Amano said the alliance is a matter of necessity.

“On this particular issue of short-term rentals,” said Amano, “both hotels and labor understand the impacts not only to hotels and their employees, but more so to diminishing affordable housing, risk in public safety and loss of economic generation.”

Leaden Response

Updating proposed changes to California’s Proposition 65, the toxic chemical notification law, statewide industry groups are mobilizing to fight a preliminary state proposal to drastically lower the lead concentration threshold that triggers the posting of warning notices. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is proposing to lower the lead threshold by 60 percent to 0.2 micrograms a day.

Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 227.