Growth Management

A four-mile stretch of the southeast San Fernando Valley has emerged as one of the premier battlegrounds in the fight over urbanization that has roiled neighborhoods across Los Angeles in a manner reminiscent of the growth wars of the mid-1980s. Developers' plans for the area, which stretches from Universal City to the upper reaches of North Hollywood, include roughly 5,500 new residences and millions of square feet of commercial and office space.

Raising the specter of rampant development and a rising tide of street-choking traffic, a group of Santa Monica residents has begun pressuring friends and neighbors to vote in November for an initiative that would limit commercial construction for 15 years. Predictably, the Residents' Initiative to Fight Traffic, or RIFT, has created a schism in the city, where the desire to maintain the area's small-town scale and charms often conflicts with the need to create jobs and spur economic gains.

When the largest church in Boulder County, Colo., wanted to double its size two years ago, county commissioners said no. Rocky Mountain Christian Church already dominated a rural corner of the county northwest of Denver. If it became any larger, commissioners said, it would destroy the area's country atmosphere. But the church didn't accept the decision quietly.

Idaho's governor said he would support public hunts to kill all but 100 of the state's gray wolves after the U.S. government strips them of protection under the Endangered Species Act. Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said he wanted hunters to kill about 550 gray wolves. The 100 surviving wolves would be the minimum before the animals could again be considered endangered. "I'm prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter said during a rally of about 300 hunters.

\o7L\f7IKE many Western towns, Rifle is a plain-looking community in a remarkable location. The town is wedged into a gulley carved by Rifle Creek as it trickles from the northern plateaus into the Colorado River. Most of Rifle consists of a narrow grid of modest clapboard and midcentury houses. It's the scenery that commands attention here. Looming above town are enormous sagebrush-studded plateaus, framed by rocky triangular hills that recede into the horizon.

Bernard Lloyd gazed across the waterfront of his Marina del Rey neighborhood Saturday toward the site of a proposed 225-foot-high luxury hotel. He said he couldn't help but wonder whether the area was on the verge of becoming an over-developed concrete jungle choked with traffic at all hours. More than two dozen projects have been built, are under construction or are winding their way through the permit process.

Twenty years ago, scores of state and regional agencies, landowners and conservationists hammered out a comprehensive agreement that dictated virtually every aspect of future development at Lake Tahoe, save one: how many piers, slips and buoys would be allowed along the lake's 72 miles of shoreline.

Sierra Madre voters have narrowly adopted a measure to preserve the city's small-town character by limiting building height to two stories and allowing a maximum of 13 dwellings per acre, a proposal that opponents said threatened to deter quality development and limit tax revenue. The Measure V initiative passed by a slim margin of just 93 votes in Tuesday's election, garnering 1,796 votes, 51% of those cast.

\o7O\f7NLY a sap, it seems, would believe that you can pull money out of thin air. But an interesting proposal is floating around L.A. that would, in effect, do just that -- and it might well work, raising meaningful sums for worthwhile aims such as affordable housing.

Santa Paula voters will go to the polls today to decide, for the fourth time in the last year, whether to allow more development in the mostly blue-collar town of 29,000. If approved by a simple majority, Measure A7 would amend the city's general plan to extend its growth boundaries to allow new development in Adams Canyon. Developers would be allowed to build up to 495 luxury homes, a 200-room resort hotel and spa and an 18-hole golf course in the canyon northwest of town.