Third in a series
Re: “Downsizing Lies Just Ahead”
What developers and homeowners will be affected if the City Council, as anticipated, adopts new zoning rules at tonight’s 7 o’clock joint meeting that would curb a perceived uptick in mansionization, also called overbuilding?
Among the questions to be posed when the advisory Planning Commission sits with the Council members in Council Chambers to hear community comments on allegedly outsized buildings is this one:
Is it true that approved but unbuilt projects will be allowed to skate through?
“Remodeling of an R-1 piece of property doesn’t require discretionary approval,” said Vice Mayor Andy Weissman. “You have to submit building plans, which are reviewed and ultimately are approved, pursuant to whatever zoning regulations are in place at the time.
“Those already in construction obviously would not be affected.
“Those that are currently in the pipeline, as we have said before, may be affected. Depends,” said Mr. Weissman, “where they are in the pipeline.
“If they have been reviewed and comments have been issued and returned for correction, those projects clearly are in the pipeline.”
In other cases, said Mr. Weissman, “where plans have been submitted but are sitting in a stack of documents that have not been acted upon, the Council probably would have to decide whether they are in the pipeline. But these are more in the nature of prospective changes, not retroactive changes.”
Does Mr. Weissman expect pushback this evening from developers?
“I am not overly interested in the opinion of developers,” he said.
“I am interested in what homeowners in Culver City are doing and would like to do.
“I don’t particularly care whether a developer who buys a piece of property on spec and wants to build the largest possible structure on that lot is adversely affected.”
Mr. Weissman said his concern is that property owners interested in remodeling or reconstructing their houses have the ability to do that “within reasonable parameters. That is what zoning regulations are all about.”
