A divided Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to halt its review of the 5,553-home Las Lomas project, dealing what could well be a fatal blow to the mega-development planned for north Los Angeles County.
"This project would have put 15,000 cars a day in an already heavily impacted area," said City Councilman Greig Smith, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley. "The people of L.A. said we can't take that anymore. We're tired of it."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, March 21, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
Las Lomas: An article in Thursday's Section A about the Los Angeles City Council's vote to oppose the proposed Las Lomas housing development misidentified Diane Trautman as a Santa Clarita city councilwoman. She is a candidate for the Santa Clarita City Council.
The 10-5 vote, which instructed the Planning Department to stop processing the application, represented a huge victory for Smith, who had argued that the council had no need to review a project that would flood the region with traffic and yet is outside city limits.
The decision also reflected the heightened anxiety over growth and traffic felt by some of the city's elected officials, who almost never issue an outright rejection of a development proposal.
For weeks, Las Lomas Land Co. had been waging an uphill battle to keep the project viable, arguing that Los Angeles should process an environmental impact report and then annex the firm's land from unincorporated Los Angeles County. The company said it had spent $20 million since 2002 trying to get its project approved.
In many ways, Los Angeles had been the development's last resort.
The site, just north of where the Golden State Freeway intersects the 14, is in territory represented by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who opposed the project. Much of it borders Santa Clarita, which also had fought the project.
That left Los Angeles, where Smith introduced a proposal last month to stop all work on the project, partly to avoid wasting the Planning Department's time over the next two years.
Even Las Lomas' defenders on the council said they did not like the proposal, which would have placed a small city on a chaparral-covered hillside. But they argued that the city already had made a promise to review it -- and that stopping would leave Los Angeles vulnerable in court.
"Our city attorney has said that if we fail to move forward, he believes we are in great jeopardy of being sued," said Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose San Fernando Valley district borders the Las Lomas site.
Alarcon, along with Councilmen Ed Reyes, Jose Huizar, Herb Wesson and Bernard C. Parks, voted to keep the project alive.
