City Council to weigh in on Lou Adler planning controversy

By Jonathan Friedman · Wed Nov 17 2004

The council must decide whether revoking a building permit would be an injustice, or if not doing so would create a bad precedent.

By Jonathan Friedman/Assistant Editor

The case that brought down a Planning Commission goes before the City Council on Monday. The council will be asked to vote on music mogul Lou Adler's request for the revocation of the building permit granted to his Carbon Beach neighbor, Bill Chadwick.

City Attorney Christi Hogin, who wrote the staff report for the council, did not make an official recommendation on how the council should vote, but an interpretation of her language would signify that she is against the revocation.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe ruled in September that the permit issued to Chadwick violated the stringline requirement, a law, which has since been adjusted, that prevents the building-out of beach front homes beyond the line of adjacent homes. The old law still applies to Chadwick's home because the design was approved when the rule was still in effect. The judge also said Adler had not made his appeal too late, as the city had contended. But rather than revoking the permit, Yaffe sent the case to the City Council for it to decide whether to reject the permit. The council must decide if revoking Chadwick's permit would be an injustice or if not rescinding it would create a bad precedent.

"A failure to revoke Chadwick's building permit due to failure to comply with the old stringline rule will have no adverse effect on the public interest and will have no precedential effect on future cases," wrote Hogin, who argued that since the old rule no longer exists, not revoking a permit based on it would not start a precedent.

This property dispute goes back to August 2001, when Pepperdine University owned Chadwick's property. Then-Planning Director Barry Hogan approved the design in the form of a Plot Plan Review Determination. Adler was never noticed about the decision to give him a chance to appeal. Judge Yaffe said he should have been noticed.

In September 2002, the California Coastal Commission granted a coastal development permit for the project. Adler requested the permit be revoked, but the Coastal Commission rejected the request in January 2003. The project then received its final city permits in September of that year.

Adler went before the Planning Commission in December to request an appeal during the public comment portion of a meeting. The commission is allowed to listen to comments during the public comment portion of a meeting but cannot take action on an item if it is not on the agenda. However, the commissioners asked several clarifying questions about the item and eventually voted to hear the appeal on a future agenda.

Several days later, Hogin publicly accused the commission of having violated the Brown Act, a state law that deals with government open-meeting rules. Later that month, Mayor Sharon Barovsky (at the time the mayor pro tem) and Mayor Pro Tem Andy Stern (at the time a councilmember) fired their respective appointed commissioners, Deirdre Roney and Robert Adler, because they said the commissioners had violated the Brown Act by discussing and taking action on an item not on the agenda and for allegedly discussing the item prior to the commission meeting. Commissioner Richard Carrigan then resigned in protest.

Roney, Adler and Carrigan said the firings had little to do with an alleged Brown Act violation, but rather were a response to Roney and Adler's publicly neutral stance on Measure M, the failed Malibu Bay Co. Development Agreement that the council heavily backed. Barovsky and Stern denied the accusation.