The council will decide whether to accept entertainment mogul Lou Adler’s request to have his neighbor’s building permit revoked. The city attorney called the case “a sorry example of people using the government.”
By Jonathan Friedman/Assistant Editor
Although a Los Angeles Superior Court judge supported the major arguments by film and music producer Lou Adler’s attorney in his case against his Carbon Beach neighbor, the judge did not revoke the building permit as Adler requested. Instead, Judge David Yaffe sent the case to the City Council for it to decide whether to reject the permit.
Adler challenged the permit of his neighbor, Bill Chadwick, because he said when the then-Planning Director Barry Hogan approved the design, he miscalculated the stringline requirement, a law which has since been adjusted that prevents the building-out of beachfront 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. Yaffe agreed that a miscalculation was made. The judge also said Adler had not made his appeal too late, as the city had contended.
Adler attorney Edward Burg said he was pleased with the decision, but wished the court system had been avoided. Burg had gone before the Planning Commission late last year to hear an appeal. It voted to hear one on a future agenda. However, this led to a dispute in which two commissioners were fired and a third resigned in protest. The appeal was never heard, and Adler sued the city instead.
“We would have made a lot more progress if we could have gone before the Planning Commission,” Burg said.
City Attorney Christi Hogin said either way the situation would have eventually reached the courtroom, because the losing party would have appealed a Planning Commission decision to the City Council-and, in turn, a council decision would have been challenged in court. Hogin added that the conflict was a waste of city expenses because it involved a dispute on a minor technicality of a law that no longer existed. In addition to the stringline rule having been altered, a person can no longer appeal a decision by planning staff to the Planning Commission, although a lawsuit can be brought against a staff decision.
“It’s a sorry example of people using the government and zoning laws in these neighbor-against-neighbor disputes,” Hogin said. “What has been accomplished with this? Nothing.”
Chadwick attorney Alan Block said he was disappointed with the judge’s decision but was pleased he did not revoke the permit, leaving the city to decide that.
This property dispute stretches 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 it. The judge 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, City Attorney Christi Hogin publicly accused the commission of having violated the Brown Act, a 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.
Roney, Adler and Carrigan said the firings had little to do with an alleged Brown Act violation, but rather were a response to Roney’s 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.