APPEAL OF PLANNING COMMISSION DECISION TO NOT MERGE THE PROPERTY AT 726 PROSPECT AVENUE, COMPRISED OF TWO LOTS, INTO ONE PARCEL. (Continued from meeting of March 14, 2006). Memorandum from Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld dated April 4, 2006. Supplemental correspondence received on April 10, 2006, from Charles Heidman and Howard Longacre. Supplemental petition supporting the appeal and an additional letter from Howard Longacre received on April 11, 2006. 
Community Development Director Blumenfeld presented the staff report and responded to Council questions. City Attorney Jenkins also responded to Council questions.
The public hearing opened at 7:58 p.m. Coming forward to address the Council on this item were:
Greg Eberhardt – appellant, summarized the letter he submitted to the City and described photographs included which illustrated the types of homes in the neighborhood; said the home he purchased in 2004 had been built on two lots that had been merged into one and that many other homes in his block had the same situation; said he had no issue with the quality of homes the developer planned to build but only with density; said a realtor told him about Hermosa’s lot merger ordinance and one reason he decided to relocated his family to Hermosa Beach was to avoid the “bowling alley” type homes so prevalent in some neighboring cities; said he understood that the City had some liability because until receiving notice of the possible intent to merge the two lots, the developer had moved forward with his plans to develop two lots; said the ordinance was not valid and there was no reason to believe that the lots on Prospect were not meant to be considered; said the lots met the required criteria and urged the Council to consider the intent of the ordinance and merge the two lots into one;
Greg Peterson – Redondo Beach, said he previously lived in Hermosa Beach on a 25-foot wide lot on Prospect Avenue off 11th Street; said when Mr. Heidman purchased the lots, he believed that they would not be merged because there were many 25-foot wide lots on Prospect; said Mr. Heidman’s plans included off-street parking, an improvement over current conditions; said Mr. Heidman was told by the City that he could build a house on each of the lots and deserved the opportunity to complete his construction as planned;
Deborah Cucci – Hermosa Beach, said one of the things she loved about Hermosa Beach was its charming smaller homes and sense of neighborhood, but every time additional houses were added, there was less space for her children to play and it became even more difficult to back out of the driveway onto Prospect;
Susan Blaco – Hermosa Beach, said the intent of the 1986 ordinance was to eliminate a lot of 25-foot wide lots;
Jeff Rice – Hermosa Beach, said this was a quality of life rather than quality of construction issue; said the City was already very congested, with crowded schools and parking problems; said he was lucky to have a stop sign near his home so he could back out of his driveway but most residents found it difficult; said mistakes made in the past to not merge some lots should not be made at this time;
Alan Dettelbach – Hermosa Beach, said the intent of the ordinance was to preserve the character of the neighborhood; said one of the goals when he was on the Planning Commission was to require minimum open space for new development; said the lots in question met the criteria for merging, which would help in the fight against density;
Evangelos Karagiannis – Hemosa Beach, said he was surprised that the Planning Commission had made the decision not to merge the lots and urged the Council to consider quality of life when making its decision;
Lourdes Garcia – Hermosa Beach, said she wanted to protect her neighborhood because she moved there to avoid oversized apartment complexes; said she was surprised that residents were not notified of development like this going on nearby;
Donald Santoranni – Hermosa Beach, said notifying the neighbors was important because a property in his neighborhood had three homes built on it and he had no idea it was happening; agreed that backing out onto Prospect was difficult and dangerous; urged the Council to control density and merge these lots;
Charles Wilmot – Hermosa Beach, submitted petitions signed by 212 of his neighbors in support of merging the lots; urged the Council to enforce the lot merger ordinance already in place to reduce density in the neighborhood; stressed the importance of notifying residents about what was going on in their neighborhood;
Julian Katz – Hermosa Beach, urged the Council to merge the lots and to clarify the criteria for the lot merger program;
Jonathan Stamper – Hermosa Beach, said developers squeeze in as many homes as possible and then sell them to others, leaving the neighborhood to suffer the density problems;
Gary Albano – Hermosa Beach, said you can’t unring a bell, that no one would ever tear down two or three houses and replace them with one; urged the Council to enforce the 1986 ordinance and merge these lots;
Stacey Montalto – Hermosa Beach, described how difficult it was to back out of her driveway and said more houses would make it worse, urged the Council to give this matter their serious consideration;
Sonja Randall – Hermosa Beach, said she and her husband moved to Hermosa Beach from North Redondo Beach with their two small children; said the parks are already overcrowded with neighborhood children and asked the Council to consider the quality of life of the children growing up in the City by increasing open space and decreasing density;
Ellen Carter – Hermosa Beach, said she loved coming home to her tree-lined neighborhood in Hermosa Beach and could look to the neighboring cities to see the heavy development that should be avoided;
Jason Greenwald – Hermosa Beach, said there was not enough parking now and on street sweeping days it is almost impossible to find a parking space; said the City needed to slow down the building of additional homes which would make the parking situation worse;
Tom Hodges – Hermosa Beach, said cars were blocking driveways and sidewalks; said the City installed ramps on the intersection curbs but people can not walk on the sidewalks because of all the parked cars;
David Grathen – Hermosa Beach, said this did not seem to be a cut and dried situation; urged the Council to look at the issues and the intent of the original ordinance and not be swayed by emotional statements but recognize the need to preserve Hermosa’s small town character;
Ali Nayak – Hermosa Beach, said his neighborhood keeps getting destroyed by more houses; said with the current trend, it would be easy to add 15 houses to a neighborhood, which, with two cars per household, would be 30 extra cars;
Dan Kircher – Hermosa Beach, said he agreed with the points made by previous speakers and added that there were a lot of cars parked on Prospect that are for sale, taking away parking spaces from the neighborhood residents;
Baiba Glassford – Hermosa Beach, said she was opposed to narrow homes and asked the Council to use the ordinance to prevent them;
Sam Perrotti – Hermosa Beach Planning Commissioner, explained that the Commission makes decisions based on rules and that the Council implements policy; said this situation might be one in which a policy decision is appropriate;
Pearl Hodges – Hermosa Beach, said she thought traffic was bad when they built their house in 1973 but now it is almost impossible to back out of her driveway and something should be done about it;
Donald Geazer – Manhattan Beach, spoke in support of the Planning Commission decision and urged the Council to consider individual property owner rights as well and not to be swayed by the residents requesting that the lots be merged;
P.J. Harari – Hermosa Beach, said there were already so many children in the schools and more people wanting to move to Hermosa because of the good schools; asked that the Council merge the lots to allow the children who already live here to take advantage of the good schools;
Sandra Essex – Hermosa Beach, said one more house would not make a big difference but urged the Council to think about quality of life; said it was sad to lose the great little older homes; said this was a developer buying property in our neighborhood and Council should consider that;
Chuck Heidman – owner of the subject property, requested that the Council accept the recommendation of the Planning Commission and allow him to develop the two lots; said he visited the Planning Department when considering the purchase of these lots to verify that the lots were not merged; said it was confirmed that the lots could be developed and that he made the purchase based on that information; said he spent over a year and a lot of money generating plans, following all the rules and codes of the City and asking for no variances; distributed three photographs showing examples of area homes, the majority of which appeared to have been built on 25-wide wide lots; said the parking situation would be improved by his construction because he was planning a minimum of four parking spaces on each property; said the two proposed structures would provide quality homes affordable for future families; said he hoped that the Council would treat the matter in a fair and competent manner; and
Lien Tran – Hermosa Beach, said she was part owner of the subject property and that they hoped to live in one home and have their grown children live in the other; said they had checked with the City to confirm that they could build two homes and was completely shocked later to learn that the lots might be merged, after a year of planning the construction of the two homes; said she has worked in Hermosa Beach for 20 years and asked the Council to consider the money they had spent and not merge the lots.
The public hearing closed at 8:44 p.m.
ActionTo direct staff to prepare a resolution for Council adoption to overturn the Planning Commission decision and merge the two lots into one parcel.
Motion Keegan, second Tucker. The motion carried, noting the dissenting vote of Reviczky and the absence of Edgerton.
Further ActionTo direct staff to prepare a revised lot merger ordinance that includes noticing provisions and clarifies the criteria.
Motion Reviczky, second Keegan. The motion carried, noting the absence of Edgerton.
At 9:07 p.m., the order of the agenda went to item 4, consent calendar items removed for separate discussion.
