Getty Plan To Build an Amphitheater in Palisades Is Okayed by Planning Board, Opposed by Residents

Peggy Clifford

Mirror Editor

   Having completed the $1 billion-plus Getty Center in Brentwood, Getty officials are now moving forward with plans to expand the Getty Villa Museum in the Pacific Palisades. 
   Getty wants to enlarge the museum itself, expand the bookstore from 550 to 3,000 square feet, the auditorium from 4,200 to 10,000 square feet, the art conservation lab from 15,200 to 45,500 square feet, the indoor restaurant from 1,800 feet to 10,000 square feet, the outdoor restaurant from 2,200 to 2,500 square feet, the ground maintenance building from 1,500 to 3,000 square feet and increase parking from 2921 to 610 spaces. 
   It also wants to add a 600-950-seat amphitheater and a 2,500 square foot entry pavilion, secure a Conditional Use Permit in order to sell alcoholic beverages on-site and schedule events in the outdoor amphitheater 45 nights a year. While some residents in the area favor the expansion, others vigorously oppose it. 
   On July 22, the Los Angeles Planning Commission voted 5 to 0 to approve the plan and send it on to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use subcommittee. If it approves the plan, it will then be passed on to the full Council and the Coastal Commission for final approval. 
   Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents the Palisades, told the Commission, “I wish to state my support for the Getty Villa Project, subject to the development of additional stringent operational conditions on these as well as other issues and with the door left open for yet more input from the community as this process evolves.” 
   The Pacific Coast Homeowners (PCH), an alliance of area groups, including the Castellammare Mesa Home Owners Association, Miramar Homeowners Association, Pacific View Estates Homeowners Association, Sunset Mesa Property Owners Association, Pacific Palisades Community Council and Pacific Palisades Residents Association, has stated that “PCH is unalterably opposed to all elements of the Getty Villa Museum Master Plan...as long as the plan includes an outdoor theater by any name or its equivalent, greatly expanded parking that encourages traffic which cannot be mitigated, (and) greatly expanded hours.” 
   Supporting PCH’s opposition to the Getty expansion are the Brentwood Homeowners Association, Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association, Mandeville Canyon Homeowners Association, Tarzana Homeowners Association and the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Association. 
   The West Valley Area of the California Highway Patrol and City of Malibu had informed the Commission that the increased traffic generated by the expanded Getty would increase already serious traffic problems on Pacific Coast Highway. The Temescal Canyon Association and Angeles District of the State Department of Parks and Recreation informed the planners that the expansion would corrode the character of Lower Los Liones Canyon, which has only recently been restored. 
   Expansion opponents’ objections turn on three basic assertions: it will have a profound negative impact on the people living nearby and Pacific Coast Highway, it violates the municipal code and it is inconsistent with the Brentwood-Pacific Palisades Community Plan. 
   PCH has alleged that the expansion requires a change in use and will result in a “commercialization of (a) residential zone.” It further alleges that the plan includes no means of “mitigating increased traffic” which will increase “pollution and noise” in the neighborhood and further strain Highway intersections which are already rated “F” by the state Department of Transportation. 
   In a letter to the Planning Commission, Rubell Helgeson, a Palisades Planning Consultant, wrote “The issues before you relate not to who favors culture, but rather to what kinds and levels of use are appropriate in the narrow confines of this little canyon....the kinds and levels of use proposed by the Master Plan are grossly inappropriate and, in the case of the outdoor theater, are not allowed under the municipal code. . .
   “The project...would result in the removal of most of the ancient live oaks and perhaps a grove of sycamore, as well as several groves of eucalyptus that serve as roosting sites for the Monarch butterfly, a Species of Special Concern...
   “An outdoor theater, an obvious entertainment venue (whether ‘commercial’ or not is immaterial in terms of impacts) is wrong in a residential area -- any residential area -- and is unnecessary for the functioning of a museum.
   “The findings required for decisions related to this project are designed to protect the neighborhoods and the general public, not to advance the grandiose Mission of the Getty Trust....
   ”The Getty will be inviting the world to its world-class antiquities center. But this constrained 64-acre site, with its grossly inadequate access, can only accept a small part of the world at a time. We respectfully insist that the neighborhoods which were long established before the Getty Villa was built (as an expansion of a single-family home) be protected from the Villa’s guaranteed spectacular success.”