POLITICS/21″/mike1st/mark2nd

By HOWARD FINE

Staff Reporter

Los Angeles has not exactly been friendly turf for developers in recent years.

Several major projects Playa Vista, the Universal Studios Inc. expansion and Village Center Westwood, to name a few have been in the works for years with little or no actual building taking place.

Even outside L.A. city limits, the political climate for development can be tough, as local elected officials impose ever-tougher growth restrictions to maintain their cities’ quality of life.

Will the politics of development get even tougher over the next 10 to 20 years?

It probably will, say local land-use experts, urban planners and development-industry representatives. The main reason: With so little available land, much of the future development in L.A. will be in the form of infill projects. And by its very nature, infill development creates more opposition from nearby residents or merchants.

In addition, there are the Byzantine ways of City Hall and the County Hall of Administration, where securing approvals has meant going from office to office, submitting and resubmitting plans, and a nearly endless series of hearings. The permitting process for some local jurisdictions, including the city of L.A., has improved slightly in recent years, but it still can result in lengthy delays.

The result? Developers have tended to look to outlying areas.

“In the past 10 to 20 years, developers have often taken the path of least resistance, and that has meant projects on the outskirts, like the Santa Clarita Valley or the Antelope Valley,” said Tom Jirovsky, senior vice president of Kosmont and Associates, an L.A. real estate consulting firm. “But we are now running out of that raw land within 30 to 40 miles of downtown L.A. And that means that if developers want to do business in L.A., infill projects will become much more prevalent.”

Unlike many of the outlying developments, where housing projects and shopping centers have been sculpted out of remote hillsides, infill development must fit into the general zoning and feel of a neighborhood.

“If it’s a bad project or is out of context with the rest of the neighborhood, you can always expect opposition,” said Con Howe, planning director for the city of Los Angeles. “For example, if you took the 38-story tower that was just approved in Century City and put it a mile down the road on a retail section of Westwood Boulevard, you would have much more wild opposition, because that area is developed differently.”

Also, except for a few notable developments, like TrizecHahn Corp.’s Hollywood & Highland project, infill projects tend to be smaller and more incremental.

“In the middle of the city, with so many different property owners, the ability of a developer to come in and assemble large sites is going to be difficult,” Howe said. “The greater volume of development activity in the city for the next 10 to 20 years will be smaller-scale development single buildings, renovations of small storefronts, and the like.”

While smaller infill projects may create less opposition than big projects, they still have to navigate the tough corridors of City Hall.

“It’s way more political dealing with a big city like L.A.,” said William Fulton, an urban planner and editor of the California Planning and Development Report. “This changed a bit during the recession when everyone recognized the demand for development, but now the demand situation has bounced back so that cities are harder on developers once again. I don’t think this will change in the long run.”

Urban planners and consultants say that infill mixed-use projects (combining retail and office uses with housing) will result in greater densities, a process referred to as “densification” or “intensification.”

But the process of increasing densities is anathema to many homeowner and community groups, which are concerned about what they see as threats to the local quality of life especially increased traffic on streets that already carry more cars than they were designed for.

“Neighborhoods are owed a certain quality of life. If that quality is degraded, then you remove one of the key reasons people come to L.A. in the first place,” said Rubell Helgeson, a planning consultant to homeowner and environmental groups.

These are the kinds of issues that have cropped up in the current charter reform debate. In fact, a number of developers and urban planners say the future of development in L.A. may depend on how the city’s charter is ultimately changed.

Many homeowner and neighborhood groups are pushing for neighborhood councils with decision-making power over development proposals. But developers are pushing for neighborhood councils with only limited advisory power.

“We don’t want neighborhood councils to be another layer of government,” said Dee Zinke, executive officer of the Los Angeles-area chapter of the Building Industry Association. All that does is create more delay, which adds costs that are then passed on to the homeowner and renter, Zinke added.

Homeowner and environmental advocates counter that increasing citizen involvement would not necessarily mean nixing all development.

Overall, though, neighborhood opposition to infill development is a fact of life that developers will have to contend with for the foreseeable future.

“We recognize that infill development is inevitable, but there have to be alternatives other than densification along major transportation corridors,” said Mike Sinkov, an attorney and activist who represents environmental groups. “It needs to be a more democratic process than what we have seen so far. There need to be better mechanisms for getting people involved in the process.”