The developer of a controversial proposal to build a luxury hotel in the environmentally sensitive hillsides of the Santa Monica Mountains is considering suing the city of Los Angeles, according to his attorney, after the city’s planning director decided on Wednesday, Sept. 6, to effectively kill the project.
Gary Safady, a film producer and a developer who proposed building the Bulgari Resort & Estates Los Angeles in Benedict Canyon, was informed by L.A. Planning Director Vince Bertoni that he was halting the General Plan amendment process, required for Safady’s development to proceed.
Bertoni’s letter came three weeks after the L.A. City Council voted 8-6 to request that Bertoni consider scrapping the General Plan amendment review process, which Bertoni had agreed to in October 2017. The council initially deadlocked on the issue in May.
In a letter to the developer, Bertoni stated that since he agreed six years ago to consider a General Plan amendment to allow the project, further studies suggest that the hotel would disrupt 92%, or more than 816,000 square feet, of natural vegetation and topography on the site, and result in the excavation of more than 118,000 cubic yards of soil, the removal of more than 75% of protected trees and shrubs and the removal of more than 90% of trees considered “significant” on the site.
In addition, a study found that sensitive habitat areas and areas where protected or endangered species might live would be affected by “significant” land disturbance, tree removal and the loss of habitat, the letter stated.
“The extent of the impacts disclosed by the Initial Study and further identified through technical reports and in consultation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, are far greater than initially anticipated” and are in violation of or contrary to city goals and policies, Bertoni wrote.
He went on to say that a hillside hotel at that site would be…
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