WeHo Planning Commission to Review Another Kings Road Project

Another development proposed for Kings Road, where an earlier proposed project has stirred opposition from local homeowners, will go before the West Hollywood Planning Commission on Thursday.

This project, whose developer is Victor Hadad of Canoga Park, would involve the demolition of two one-story, single-family homes and the construction of a four-story condominium building with 30 units, including two for low-income people and three for moderate-income people. The location is 1028-1030 N. Kings Rd., just behind the Gelson’s grocery store on Santa Monica Boulevard. It includes 58 parking spaces in an underground garage. There will be no guest parking spaces.

The developer is asking the Planning Commission to allow it to make 15 of the parking spaces compact rather than standard size and to waive the requirement for a setback of the upper stories of an additional six feet from the ground floor. The developer also is asking that required private open space per condo unit be reduced from 120 square feet to 108 square feet for 12 of the units. And it is requesting that the length of the private open space for 12 units be reduced from the required seven feet to 6.3 feet.

The city’s Department of Community Development is recommending that the Planning Commission approve the project.

Just a few hundred feet south is the 826 N. King Rd. project, which was a hotly contested issue during the June 2 election to fill a single seat on the West Hollywood City Council. The developer, Dimetri Darmos, has proposed to replace a single-family house with a building with 34 apartments on a half-acre lot. The five-story building would include five units for low- and moderate-income people, a requirement under city law. While the size of the lot means only 25 apartments would ordinarily be permitted under the city zoning ordinance, city and state laws that require the addition of affordable housing for a building of that size also allow a developer to increase the density of the building by 35 percent.

A group of neighborhood homeowners organized as United Neighbors for Reponsible Development (UNRED) protested that the project would make parking more difficult, substantially increase traffic and hurt the ambiance of the neighborhood. The group also dismissed the argument that the project would provide more housing for low- and moderate-income people by arguing that West Hollywood did not need more of such housing.

Three candidates in the City Council election — Heidi Shink, a Planning Commissioner who previously had voted for the project, and Cole Ettman and Larry Block — announced their opposition to it during their election campaign. At a meeting in May, the City Council sent the project back to the Planning Commission for reconsideration, a move that allowed Council members to avoid taking a vote on such a contentious matter before the election.

Also on the Planning Commission’s Thursday evening agenda are a proposal to demolish a single-family house at 8557 West Knoll Dr. and replace it with a five-unit townhouse and a proposal to build a “tall wall” billboard at 8228 Sunset Blvd. between Havenhurt Drive and North Harper Avenue.

The Commission will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the City Council Chambers, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. south of Santa Monica.