Add The California Post on Google A massive housing project on a Southern California country club’s golf course has been stalled due to the presence of mountain lions.
The plan calls for turning part of the Woodland Hills Country Club, a century-old golf course near the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood, into a 400-strong housing complex.
Newport Beach developer Arrimus Capital, which owns the country club, filed an application to redevelop part of the golf course with 398 homes.
The proposed project would include 175 for-sale, three-story detached single-family homes; 189 rental apartments in a four-story building; and 34 rent-restricted apartments in another four-story building. It would also include more than 55,900 square feet of open space.
Arrimus Capital was looking to use a state housing law that allows developers to bypass extensive city review processes for certain mixed-income multifamily residential projects built on commercial land, such as a golf course.
But on Friday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to block the massive housing project, with LA councilmember Bob Blumenfield arguing that the property serves as habitat for mountain lions.
“Due to a plethora of documentation from neighbors and a lot of biological and ecological research provided by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other biological experts, the Planning Department just determined the Woodland Hills Country Club site is ‘wildlife habitat’ for the endangered Mountain Lion,” the council member said in a newsletter to constituents.
Blumenfield has also argued that the property is located in a “very high” fire hazard severity zone and that the state law being used to fast-track the development was not intended for projects like this one.
Another concern raised by Blumenfield was that the developer was on track to bypass the city’s normal discretionary review process by using Assembly Bill 2011, a state housing law that requires qualifying projects to be approved through a streamlined process.
Blumenfield argued that doing so would prevent the project from undergoing the city’s usual review process, including consideration of community input, environmental impacts and fire safety before receiving approval from the Planning Department.
However, he said, “determining that the project is proposed on endangered species habitat was enough” to force the developer to instead go through the lengthier conventional approval process.
Arrimus Capital representative Aaron Green told the Los Angeles Times that the developer will now need to file a lawsuit in response to the city’s actions. He accused the city of working against Angelenos who are “in desperate need for real housing opportunities” and said “false assertions” had been made that the golf course is mountain lion habitat.
In response to the threat of a lawsuit, Blumenfield told the Times there is “a plethora of information” showing that the property is, in fact, mountain lion habitat and said the city’s decision leaves the Woodland Hills community “in a good position.”
Woodland Hills developer Victor Giraud first built the golf course in the mid-1920s. He offered free club memberships to people who bought lots in his housing tract. In 1945, the course became a private country club.
In 1988, the Los Angeles Times had already reported about concerns over a developer that hoped to buy the then-member-owned club and convert the property into luxury single-family homes.
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