By ELIZABETH HAYES

Staff Reporter

All of a sudden, L.A.’s master-planned communities are back.

Actually, they never went away they were just mired in years of squabbles involving environmentalists, nearby homeowners and elected officials.

But in just the last few months, three of the largest such projects in L.A. history have been approved: Newhall Ranch, Ahmanson Ranch and Playa Vista. Add to that another master-planned project, Porter Ranch, which has recommenced development after years of inactivity, and the 1,600-home Rosedale project in Azusa.

All this activity sets the stage for tens of thousands of additional houses, town homes and apartments to come on line over the next decade, bringing badly needed relief to L.A.’s shortage of housing.

“These are the last gasp of the major developments in the outlying areas that are still within reasonably close proximity. They’re really more of the same, but the last generation. When they’re built out, there’s not a lot of land except for (smaller) infill,” said William Fain, urban designer and managing partner with Johnson Fain Partners in downtown.

These master-planned communities will bring major changes to Los Angeles. Thousands of acres of open land in the Santa Clarita Valley, eastern Ventura County, the San Fernando Valley and the Marina del Rey area will be covered with new homes, offices, schools, shopping centers and roads. More middle-income families will move from the inner city to the suburbs. Freeways and water tables will be further taxed.

Yet the large number of new homes, more than 40,000 units in all, will fall far short of the number needed to adequately house L.A.’s projected population increase. By the year 2020, the county is expected to grow by 2.6 million people. With limited land left to build on, it’s anyone’s guess where the additional population will live.

“L.A. County is not producing anywhere near what it needs to meet the demand,” said Richard Gollis, a principal with the Concord Group, a Newport Beach-based consultant to homebuilders and master-planned community developers.

The impacts of such growth are unavoidable.

“We cannot stop people coming to California or producing more people,” said Ehud Mouchly, managing director of the real estate group at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in downtown. “What do we do, make a wall around the place and no one comes in?”

The question is how to best accommodate the growth. Like them or not, large master-planned communities will play a big role.

“The most important thing we have to consider is a much broader framework for development in the county, particularly looking at sustainable development. We can’t keep building all over hillsides and gobbling up land. We have a lot of land in the city of L.A. that’s not being used,” said Edward Blakely, a professor of urban planning and development at USC. “We can master plan in the city we’re showing that with Playa Vista. There are other areas where we can do master re-planning.”

The master-planned communities currently on the drawing boards are the outgrowth of decades of population shifts that have seen much of the middle class migrate from the urban core. The master-planned projects also reflect consolidation that has taken place among homebuilders and land holdings. Many smaller, privately held homebuilders have been acquired by publicly traded companies that have deep pockets and can weather fluctuations in the real estate market.

“Five years ago, during the slowdown, who was going forward? Institutional developers. These are the ones that are ready,” Gollis said.

That staying power is an attraction for many homebuyers, who also like the safety and security offered within master-planned communities, as well as the rules and regulations on home design and maintenance, which can bolster home values. All the communities now being developed in the L.A. area offer a range of housing options, from less-expensive rentals to luxury single-family homes.

While such communities offer benefits, critics assert that there are many drawbacks. With the exception of Playa Vista, master-planned communities tend to be in outlying areas, raising the specter of further freeway congestion. Environmentalists, in particular, lament the loss of farm land and natural habitat.

The homogenized nature of the developments is also cited by critics much as it was back in the ’50s when Levittown first sprang up in post-war America.

“(Master-planned communities) are generally sprawl of the worst sort. They perpetuate an automobile-dependent pattern of development which is not sustainable; they create social isolation and perpetuate class divisions,” said Dan Silver, coordinator of the Endangered Habitats League, a five-county organization. “Where we want to go is infill, revitalization of existing areas, communities that are transit-oriented and pedestrian-oriented.”

The only master-planned project underway that advances some of those goals, he said, is Playa Vista.

But others argue that the outlying communities eventually will develop job centers with critical mass, eliminating the need for residents to commute into central L.A.

“If we can use edge communities and develop their local employment centers, which are connected electronically to other places, you might see a beneficial impact,” Mouchly said. “Playa Vista, ultimately it will take decades will become an urbanized center, something like Century City. The whole marina area will become an urban core.”

They also point out that master-planned communities, even in outlying areas, are preferable to the alternative of haphazard growth, or “creeping subdivisions.” That’s because the potential impacts and measures needed to mitigate those impacts are laid out in environmental studies long before the first spade of dirt is turned. Piecemeal projects, on the other hand, do not look at the aggregate impacts.

“In the master-planning context, it generates more of an opportunity for smart growth than when you carve up in little pieces with lots of developers,” Gollis said. “We are talking about management of resources.”

By the time master-planned communities are actually built, they have been subjected to years of scrutiny and, in many cases, litigation.

“These have been evaluated and beaten to death. There’s probably been more scrutiny on environmental impacts, traffic mitigation and quality of life,” said Richard Klein, a partner at E & Y; Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group, which does consulting work on such projects. “Is it going to change the topography or quality of life? Yes it will, but generally, people view it as positive. Most people believe new development is positive because it provides jobs and places to live.”