GREAT WHITE WHALE GOES TO COURT
The Great White Whale expansion plans are being
taken to court. Marvin Klotz, a neighbor of the GWW, as the Best Western Marina
Pacific Hotel is affectionately - or not - known, objects to its shredding of
the Venice Specific Plan.
The already too big hotel at 1697 Pacific
Avenue (one block south of Windward), finessed its proposal to add another story
to the existing 52-foot tall building. The Venice Coastal Zone Specific Plan
(VSP) limits buildings to 35 feet, however, the Great White Whale was built
prior to the adoption of the plan. The GWW’s expansion plan sailed through
the city of Los Angeles’ planning bureaucracy and city council, in spite
of community opposition and its gross violations of the
VSP.
Klotz is suing to block a further
exception by the GWW to the VSP in both height and density. The Los Angeles
Municipal Code states that exceptions (variances) to the specific plan can only
be granted if the request meets all five of the following
criteria:
• that not granting the
exceptions would “result in practical difficulties or unnecessary
hardships,”
• that there
are exceptional circumstances,
•
that most other properties already enjoy this right, that is, being six-stories
tall,
• that the exception will
not be detrimental to the public welfare or harm the adjacent
property,
• that granting the
exception will be consistent “with the principles, intent and goals”
of the VSP.
Klotz maintains that the
plan does not meet these criteria, and suggests that the city planning staff,
which opposed the expansion, should not have been overruled. Since all
administrative remedies had been exhausted, he filed the suit, which argues that
the planning commission grossly abused its discretion in granting the variances
to the VSP.
Posted: Tue - April 1, 2003 at 06:40 PM