Eight homes are on proposed on the lip of Las Pulgas Canyon, but might require a subdivision review.
Marquette Development Requires Subdivision
Pacific Palisades resident Cosimo Pizzulli has asked the City of L.A. to approve the development of eight homes on the rim of Las Pulgas Canyon, along Marquette Street.
At the Community Council meeting on October 25, Marquette neighbors asked the board to send a specific letter to the City Planning Department, urging planners to thoroughly examine eight points of researched opposition to the development, including the canyon’s geology and a major sewer extension.
“The average size of the proposed houses is 7,156 sq. ft., which is 5,338 sq.ft. larger than the average size of the 24 houses currently on Marquette,” said the neighbors’ information sheet. Each proposed house includes a swimming pool or spa, despite being located on the edge of the steep canyon.
Rick Mills, who represents the Marquette neighborhood as the Area 4 representative, made a motion for PPCC to write a letter to the City to seriously consider the neighbors’ concerns and to review whether the project should go through a more extensive subdivision process.
Suddenly, at 8:59 p.m, Chamber of Commerce representative Rick Lemmo (a senior VP for developer Rick Caruso) asked for a postponement of the vote, despite the October 29 deadline for public input to the Planning Department following the City’s October 1 hearing on the project.
Rick Lemmo, Rick Caruso’s Vice President of Corporate Relations, who sits on the Pacific Palisades Community Council as a Chamber of Commerce representative, asked to postpone the vote about the Marquette development until he could consult with the Chamber of Commerce.
Lemmo said he didn’t know how the Chamber Board would want him to vote, and cited Article X of the PPCC Bylaws, which allows for an organizational representative on the Community Council to single-handedly force a vote to be postponed to the next Council meeting.
After the meeting, Mills, who majored in urban studies at Stanford and then received a master’s degree in city planning from UC Berkeley, grew even more concerned that the City was improperly handling the project. Mills felt the project needed much more extensive review as a full subdivision under the state’s Subdivision Map Act.
Mills, who worked as a city planner for Pasadena and then Santa Monica, told Circling the News, “The subject property is only three L.A. County Assessor parcels on the County’s Assessment rolls.”
That means that if Pizzulli wants to build eight homes on his three parcels, he would need to resubmit the project as a subdivision, Mills said, citing Govt. Code 66424: “Subdivision means the division, by any subdivider, of any unit or units of improved or unimproved land, or any portion thereof, shown on the latest equalized country assessment roll as a unit or as contiguous units, for the purpose of sale, lease, or financing, whether immediate or future.”
To see if he was missing something, Mills sent his findings on October 31 to City planners Kenton Trinh and Juliet Oh plus Councilman Mike Bonin’s staff members Len Nguyen and Krista Kline, but has not received a response.
Consideration of Mills’ motion, which was left hanging at the last Community Council meeting, will resume at Thursday’s Community Council meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. in the Palisades Library community room. The public is invited.
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