Housing Plan Back Again : Sleepy Hollow: Proposal survives 2-2 vote by city planners. It returns to the City Council, which rejected an earlier version last December.

The ghost of Sleepy Hollow will rise again before the Glendale City Council.

The city Planning Commission, with one member absent, deadlocked 2 to 2 Monday on a revised plan for a subdivision in rugged Glenoaks Canyon, east of Sleepy Hollow Place and south of Glenoaks Boulevard, where residents have fought development for years. A public hearing on the plan is scheduled Oct. 29 at the regular 2 p.m. council meeting.

City analysts said developer Ken Doty’s latest proposal, for 24 luxury view homes on a 30-acre hillside site, is only slightly revised from a 25-home plan rejected by a 3-2 council vote last December.

The new plan eliminates one lot, reduces grading in one area of the subdivision and makes cuts to the canyon’s slopes less visible, said Wolfgang Krause, a senior city planner. But it still calls for cutting a ridge to obtain the dirt needed to fill in a canyon and create sites for $1-million homes.

Scores of homeowners have fought to block development in the scenic canyon since Doty’s plans were first introduced five years ago. City officials said they had hoped that the developer and opponents would compromise, but residents have refused to meet with Doty since the revised plan was submitted in May.

“We have nothing to talk about,” Dave Weaver, president of the Glenoaks Canyon Homeowners Assn., told planning commissioners at Monday night’s hearing. “Where does it say in the city code that a lot on a hillside has to have commanding views?”

Weaver charged that Doty “has shown nothing but contempt” for pleas by residents and the City Council to avoid cutting a ridge.

Homeowners have urged that the number of homes be scaled back in order to protect the ridge, reduce potential environmental damage to the canyon and limit traffic and school crowding.

But John Gantus, an attorney representing Doty, said at the hearing Monday that the changes in the plan are significant. “We have reduced dramatically the cuts that are proposed,” he said.

Other alternatives, including limiting the development to as few as 12 homes, were considered but discarded as not financially feasible, Gantus said.

Weaver complained that the developer did not confer with homeowners before submitting a revised plan. “We will work with Mr. Doty on any legitimate compromise he wishes to propose,” he said.

Homeowners have disregarded the current plan as insensitive, Weaver said.

Planning Commissioner Ted Osborn blamed the stalemate on “two polarized positions” over development in the canyon, which residents have fought for more than 15 years.

Osborn warned that the city cannot block use of the site forever. “Something eventually will be done,” he said, although he voted to oppose the latest plan. He and other commissioners chastised homeowners for refusing to communicate better with Doty.

The revised plan also was opposed by commission Chairwoman Claudia Culling. Commissioners Paul Burkhard and Robert McCormick endorsed the plan, saying it meets all city and state requirements. Commissioner Gary Tobian was absent.

The project is one of four proposed subdivisions exempted from a moratorium on hillside development adopted in 1990 to allow planners to draw up new rules on cutting ridges and grading hillsides.