Dozens of people packed the pews of St. Mel Catholic Church Friday to come up with a plan to stop developers from closing a historic golf course and country club to build nearly 400 homes on the land.<\/p>\n
Residents at Friday’s meeting say their top concern is more congestion in a high fire hazard zone.<\/p>\n
“I think it\u2019ll be the death of Woodland Hills if they go ahead with this project,” said Woodland Hills resident Stephen Scheff.<\/p>\n
Built in the 1920s, the club and golf course have been around for generations, sitting on 93 acres just east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and south of the 101 Freeway.<\/p>\n
The club was sold in 2020 and is owned by Newport Beach-based real estate firm Arrimus Capital.<\/p>\n
According to the project\u2019s website, developers plan to close the club and use a 20-acre portion to build 175 single-family homes, 126 apartments and 97 rent-restricted senior homes.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/strong>The fire risks and just the changing character of our community,” said Anita Zaccaro. \u201cIt\u2019s in a high fire zone and it\u2019s a lot of units they are considering putting there. I think it\u2019s way too massive for the area.”<\/p>\n The developers filed an application with the city of LA last month and claim their efforts will help address the housing crisis.They\u2019re seeking approval under AB 2011, a state law that fast-tracks housing permits in commercial corridors by bypassing environmental review and public hearings.<\/p>\n “This is not a commercial corridor and as a result, it\u2019s a misapplication of the law,” said Matt Heisie, with the Woodland Hills Neighborhood Collective.<\/p>\n Councilmember Bob Blumenfield explains that Governor Newsom recently signed amendments to the bill, redefining what makes a commercial corridor \u2013 instead of use, it\u2019s the width of the street. He claims the developers lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento to craft amendment language to avoid public scrutiny.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>If this moves forward under those state laws, it never comes to a vote before the city council,” said Blumenfield. \u201cI ultimately think this is probably going to be something that ends up in court.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, the developer\u2019s application is under review by the city\u2019s planning department.<\/p>\n Blumenfield says he wants to get clarity from the city\u2019s land use attorneys to make sure the state law is correctly interpreted before the project goes any further.<\/p>\n The developer and project spokesperson did not immediately respond to NBC4’s request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of people packed the pews of St. Mel Catholic Church Friday to come up with a plan…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":444179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,37384],"class_list":{"0":"post-444178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-woodland-hills"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115711523569108710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}