Cities Zoning

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling may deliver a hard blow to the city's efforts to limit the number of drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation centers. * The ruling prevents cities from using zoning laws to deny operating permits to group homes, and has forced the City Council to give Nancy Clark a second chance at getting a license for the Recovery Center, which would be at 1110 Victoria St. Clark, executive director of the center, was denied a permit to operate last month.

A landlord in San Diego can evict a medical marijuana dispensary because under city zoning laws, pot dispensaries are not legal anywhere in the city, a Superior Court judge has ruled. San Diego County Superior Court Judge Ronald Prager, in a decision released Monday, said it was permissible for Kimber Investment Group to evict the Medibloom dispensary from the building that the investment group owns in a Rancho Bernardo shopping center. "Cities ... are the arbiter of zoning laws," Prager wrote.

Responding to concerns from 20 angry residents of Mildred Avenue, the City Council deferred the granting of a zone change for construction of an office building on their block until the developer comes back to the council with plans that would shift the driveway for the building from Mildred Avenue to Washington Boulevard.

The City Council voted Wednesday to place new restrictions on development in the hillside neighborhoods of El Sereno, Hermon, Lincoln Heights and Monterey Hills. Councilman Jose Huizar, who represents part of northeast Los Angeles, said the zoning changes would preserve the character of hillside neighborhoods while addressing fire safety. The measures establish new limits on building height, retaining wall height and the square footage of new hillside construction projects, as well as the amount of dirt that can be removed.

Some developers are skirting the city's anti-mansionization regulations by building homes with high-vaulted ceilings, which create two-story-tall rooms but keep the amount of floor space within legal limits, Community Development Director Robert Dawson told the City Council Tuesday. In response, the council changed the zoning regulations for rooms taller than 12 feet. Floor area for such rooms now will be counted double.

A city zoning official will hold public hearings in Sherman Oaks on Friday regarding several applications for city zoning permits, including a proposal to expand a Sun Valley restaurant and amusement center, the Los Angeles office of zoning administration has announced. The applications include requests for: * A conditional-use permit to renovate and expand Chuck E. Cheese restaurant at 8375 Laurel Canyon Blvd. in Sun Valley.

Los Angeles officials are moving toward a faster, more high-tech and user-friendly approach to city zoning maps. For decades, the city has been working to create the Geographical Informational System, a comprehensive and changeable database of all local maps and zoning restrictions.

The Santa Clarita Planning Commission is scheduled to complete its review in August of a new zoning map that will replace a Los Angeles County plan for the city. The commission has been working since last fall on the map, which will designate which areas of the city may be developed as commercial, residential or industrial properties. A decision on the plan ultimately rests with the City Council, which will hold public hearings on the zoning map before voting on it by the end of the year.

A Los Angeles resident has sued the city to block it from implementing a new law that would roll back zoning rules for projects that have at least a few units of affordable housing. Sandy Hubbard filed a lawsuit last week arguing that the City Council should have completed an environmental review of the law before approving it last month. The lawsuit's arguments closely mirrored those made by Planning Commission President Jane Ellison Usher in an e-mail sent last month to neighborhood activists saying the law was vulnerable to legal challenge.

The debut of a long-awaited quiet zone, limiting the blasts of train horns in the city, has been delayed, officials said Tuesday. The zone was to take effect today, but problems arose with wiring and software required to operate gates at intersections, said Traci Stubbler, a spokeswoman for Placentia. The six-year process has been plagued with difficulties and setbacks, she said. She said she did not know when the latest problems would be solved.

Fearful that the Chamber of Commerce is becoming a political arm of Disney, Anaheim Councilwoman Lorri Galloway is calling for the city to pull the business group's funding in response to its lead role in helping Disney fight City Hall on a hot-button zoning issue. The chamber is organizing two Disney-backed ballot measures, an initiative and a referendum, aimed at preserving nonresidential zoning in the area surrounding the company's theme parks.

A 20-year-old Oxnard man was convicted Friday of violating a court-imposed gang injunction, the first to face legal consequences from the order outlawing certain activities by members of the Colonia Chiques street gang. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kevin J. McGee said that Ernesto Perez was a member of the Chiques and that he had twice violated a June gang injunction by staying out past a 10 p.m. curfew within a 6.6-square-mile enforcement zone.

With three sons and her mother to care for, Flora Andrade finds that her wages as a Santa Monica hotel housekeeper run out long before her family's needs do. "I can't pay for my rent, my bills, my food," she said. "It's just too little."

Four years after pushing through a local growth-control ordinance, activists announced a new campaign Wednesday that would further rein in Simi Valley's plans for expansion. If the latest bid by the slow-growth group SOAR is successful, it would clip Alamos and Brea canyons and Marr and Runkle Canyon ranches from the city's expansion zone. That effectively would require voter approval for any project outside the city's current boundaries.

First, the guy with the pet alligators landed in hot water with the city. Now it's Rebecca Apodaca, who has a bad hip and fixes trombones. For almost 20 years, both toiled away unnoticed and undisturbed by government interlopers. It was one of the perks of living in the unincorporated Laguna Terrace neighborhood in south Orange County--a little patch of the suburban frontier. Then the city folks came calling.

Amid an Orange County coastline marked by dramatic ocean vistas and luxury homes, a small corner of Huntington Beach sticks out with the sights, sounds and smells of old industry. A short distance from people surfing at Huntington State Beach is the AES Corp.'s power plant, with its two, 214-foot-tall stacks towering above the coastal palms. Nearby are scattered a dozen fuel-storage tanks, some still in use, others empty and rusting, waiting to be dismantled.