City Planners Advise Against Oakmont

Glendale’s Planning Division recommended Wednesday night that the City Council reject Oakmont View V, a development of 572 luxury homes in the Verdugo Mountains above the Oakmont Country Club.

City senior planner Laura Stotler dissected a 24-page report before hundreds of environmentalists, homeowners and developers who packed the Glendale Civic Auditorium for a final public hearing on the controversial project before the council votes on its fate next Tuesday.

The report presented to the city Planning Commission found the 238-acre development is “inconsistent with the city’s General Plan” and “poses a significant public safety hazard.”

As Oakmont opponents applauded the report, Stotler said building homes on the steep, rocky slopes could result in landslides or rockslides, potentially causing the loss of life and property.

“The site is not physically suitable,” Stotler said.

The report also found the Oakmont proposal would pose “substantial environmental danger” to the area’s oak and sycamore trees, acorn woodpeckers, deer and endangered wildlife.

It also would harm a wetland habitat of “special-status plants and animals,” the report said.

A four-volume, 2,000-page environmental impact report released last week concluded that Oakmont would harm the air, wildlife and scenic vistas but would not significantly increase Glendale’s population or require building community facilities to accommodate growth.

Oakmont developer John L. Gregg called the report “misleading,” particularly the section warning about building on slopes.

“If anyone ever got killed by the failure of engineered cut slopes in the city of Glendale, I would know about it,” he said.

His family has built in the area since 1934, he said.

Gregg also said the project’s benefits, including tax revenue for the city and more housing, outweigh the negatives. “The hills are the only land left,” he said.

Dozens of Oakmont opponents, who spoke late into the night, praised the city’s report. “It provides overwhelming evidence that the project should be denied,” said Marc Stirdivant, who heads Glendale’s Volunteers Organized in Conserving the Environment.

“In my estimation, there is not anything good about Oakmont,” he said.

Proposed federal legislation calls for a study of expanding the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area to include the Verdugos. It would allow the Oakmont land to be used as recreational space.

State lawmakers have approved $8 million toward the purchase of the Oakmont tract. But the land was appraised at $46 million more than a decade ago, Gregg said.

Gregg said his company, Gregg’s Artistic Homes, proposed the project in 1992, a year before Glendale adopted a law that would have limited the number of hillside homes to about 50. Gregg sued the city, then agreed to drop the lawsuit if officials allowed the proposal to proceed under the earlier, less restrictive ordinance.

He estimated that his company has spent more than $3.25 million on environmental impact reports, legal fees, geological studies, biological studies, engineering work and other expenses related to the Oakmont proposal.