COMMUNITY GROUP BEATS CITY IN COURT - Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones has ruled that the Los Angeles City Council's approval of a planned 20-story retail and residential tower at Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street in Hollywood was illegal. [Link to “Hollywood-Gower Ruling” pdf]
Jones slammed the Los Angeles City Planning Department and City Council, ruling that the City had violated the public's constitutional due process rights and "negated . . . meaningful public participation."
Discussing a pattern of misconduct by City Planning staff, Jones found that "effective public participation was wholly derailed by the process adopted by the City in this case."
Community group La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association of Hollywood, plaintiff in the lawsuit, also obtained emails between consultants for the project developer, 6104 Hollywood, LLC, and City staff. Those emails were further evidence of "impropriety in the process."
According to attorney Robert P. Silverstein, who won the lawsuit on behalf of the neighborhood association, the emails revealed back-channel communications between the City and developer's consultants and collusion to suppress information from public review.
"We are grateful for the court's ruling, which exposes many troubling aspects of the City's planning and approval process," said Silverstein.
Jones also invalidated the City's environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. Among other things, she noted that "the project's parking spaces would fall well below the applicable recommended residential parking ratios" in a "parking congested area," but the EIR failed to properly analyze this issue.
Jones found that the City's EIR provided no evidence "that the circulation system of Hollywood is sufficiently robust to withstand untold numbers of new residents and their guests cruising for non-existent street parking."
"To shore up their position, the City and developer tried to dump hundreds of pages of new material into the record, not just at the last minute, but even after the public hearing had closed," said Silverstein. "The City went for an end-run around the law, but we prevented that," Silverstein added.
The ruling comes at a time when the City of Los Angeles is already under attack for adopting an updated Hollywood Community Plan. Three separate lawsuits filed in recent weeks, including one by Silverstein for the La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association of Hollywood, accuse the City of violating environmental laws regarding land use and long-range planning issues.
On May 17, 2012, the La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association of Hollywood also sued the City of Los Angeles and developer CIM Group over CIM’s demolition of the 1924 Old Spaghetti Factory building at Sunset Boulevard and Gordon Street for a 23-story planned project.
As part of the City and former Redevelopment Agency’s approvals, CIM was required to preserve the historic Sunset Boulevard façade and integrate it into the new project. Instead, Silverstein explained, a “midnight” demolition razed the entire structure.
The neighborhood group seeks to compel the return of $3.7 million to City coffers that the City provided to the developer. The lawsuit also asks the Superior Court to prevent payment of an additional $10-16 million in taxpayer money for the project.
(Bradly S. Torgan is a Los Angeles attorney.) -cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 61
Pub: July 31, 2012
