Chris Parker / July 12, 2021
The Los Angeles Planning Department hosted a public hearing last month on a proposed ordinance that could significantly impact residential properties in the city’s Hillside areas. Based upon online chatter and the immediate reaction from the city’s residential development community, it appears that the proposed Ridgeline Protection Ordinance is going to be very controversial and hotly contested.
The Ridgeline Protection Ordinance “aims to better preserve and protect the city’s ridgelines,” according to department literature, by limiting grading, building height and the location of buildings on properties that are located on or near an identified ridgeline. These regulations are in addition to those found in the current Hillside ordinance and other overlays such as various Specific Plans (Mulholland, Mt. Washington, etc.) and the Hillside Construction Regulation ordinance of 2017. In general, the RPO regulations are even more restrictive. A property that gets designated Ridgeline Protection 1 (RP1), for example, will not be allowed to construct a structure within 50 vertical or horizontal feet from any ridgeline. Properties in the RP2 will be limited to 18 feet above a ridgeline.
The ordinance doesn’t actually change the zone of any particular property, neighborhood or community. If eventually adopted by the city, RPO will create a Special Use District (SUD) which could then be included in Zone Changes and Community Plan updates in the future. In other words, the RPO gives the Zoning Code additional regulations that could be used in the city’s Hillside areas but there will need to be another round of draft ordinances, public hearings and votes by the City Planning Commission and City Council for any of these regulations to actually be imposed on specific neighborhoods or communities.
City Planning hosted a Zoom hearing on June 17, the first meeting in which the public could make comments on the draft ordinance. The residential real estate community is already rallying against these proposed regulations. For example, the Greater Los Angeles Realtors Association held an emergency meeting late last month and issued on behalf of its 12,000 Realtor members a strongly worded letter of objection to the proposal.
Planning staff is taking additional comments until Aug. 4. After the initial comment phase ends, Planning staff will review and respond to the comments submitted and will eventually present the RPO to the City Planning Commission at one of its public hearings. The process and public notification requirements for new community- or area-wide ordinances is lengthy and will give members of the public time to comment to the public record, lobby their local councilmembers and/or attend public hearings to speak on the proposed ordinance. Based upon other ordinances proposed by City Planning and eventually turned into law by the City Council and Mayor, it’s safe to assume that the RPO is still at least 6 months from possible enactment, but could be easily a year or more. It could also be voted down by the CPC or City Council or vetoed by the mayor. And as stated above, that’s just the first step. Any use of these regulations on a specific neighborhood or area would have to go through the same multi-step, multi-hearing process before they could be effectuated.
Bottom line: There is still plenty of time to provide input on this ordinance as a citywide regulation of Hillside homes and for specific neighborhoods in the city’s Hillside areas.
Resources:
The Planning Department’s June 17 presentation on the RPO. (https://planning.lacity.org/odocument/56eb282c-2943-41f9-b751-08e8b8daa37f/Ridgeline_Ordinances_Public_Hearing_Presentation.pdf)
The current draft proposed ordinance. (https://planning.lacity.org/odocument/8f170d4b-d841-4ac5-bfbd-0eed656b326f/Ridgeline_Protection_Ordinance.pdf)
Planning has provided a preliminary list of parcels that could be impacted if the RPO SUD is enacted and then approved for citywide regulations. (https://planning.lacity.org/odocument/37bba2f5-93c7-4c87-a4ee-f03165b95746/List_of_Zone_Change_Parcels.pdf)
A group of Hillside homeowners and professionals in the residential development industry have started a group to share information and and concerns about the RPO as drafted. Their website – TheRidgeline.org – is expected to go live today.
