Mini-Mall OKd Where Carwash Once Stood in Studio City : Building: The City Council approves a permit for a site where efforts to halt demolition of a 1950s landmark caught nationwide attention.

By JOHN SCHWADA

Feb. 28, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Los Angeles City Council, stung by a judge’s ruling that it abused its power in its zeal to confound a developer’s plans to raze a landmark Studio City carwash, decided Tuesday to let the site’s owner build his mini-mall.

By a 12-0 vote, the council directed city employees to issue a building permit to developer Ira Smedra to construct a $15-million, 53,000-square-foot mini-mall at Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards, site of the former carwash.

The vote signaled a major victory for Smedra. His effort to demolish the carwash aroused the anger of the surrounding community and prompted a crusade--both celebrated and ridiculed--to declare the 28-year-old facility, with its distinctive 1950s architecture, an official city cultural monument.

“I’m disappointed,” said Jack McGrath, a Studio City resident and leader of the fight to save the carwash from the wrecking ball.

The carwash was well known for the three, 55-foot-tall boomerang-shaped steel beams that curved above it and for its neighbor on the site, a Tiny Naylor’s restaurant. All structures on the property were razed about a month ago, and the steel beams have reportedly been sold to a Sun Valley man.

Councilman Joel Wachs, architect of the council campaign against Smedra, could not be reached for comment.

Although the carwash was demolished a month ago, opponents of the mini-mall still hoped the city’s refusal to issue a building permit until there was a full environmental review of Smedra’s project would force the developer to make concessions, said McGrath and Walter McIntyre, president of the Briarcliff Improvement Assn., a homeowner group.

Last August, the council ordered a freeze on permits for Smedra’s project until the developer prepared the environmental impact report. Smedra complained the report process would cost him $1 million.

Smedra subsequently sued the city and earlier this month Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski scathingly rebuked the city for requiring the report of Smedra, calling the city’s conduct an example of environmental procedures “gone seriously awry.”

Zebrowski’s order, issued Feb. 7, passed unnoticed until it entered the council’s discussion Tuesday.

In his decision, the judge characterized the city’s decision to require a report as “more an exercise in constituent relations and legislative back scratching than careful and responsible environmental analysis.”

Zebrowski said the city reached its decision hastily and without reviewing much evidence of the need for a report. “The comments of Councilmember Holden indicate that certain members of council were not even listening to the meager evidence being presented,” the judge said.

An environmental impact report requirement must be “supported by substantial evidence in the record, not by a naked council order alone,” the judge continued.

Despite such strong language, Zebrowski gave the city a second chance to present its case. If it didn’t take it, the alternative was that the city issue Smedra’s building permit. The judge wanted an answer today on what the city would do.

There was no debate on the item. Because there was nothing new to add to the city’s case, it was recommended that the city issue a permit to Smedra, said Assistant City Atty. Ed Dygert.

“The court wasn’t real ambiguous about how it felt,” Dygert noted.

The council’s decision last August to require a report was unusual. The city’s Building and Safety Department had advised that no report was needed but the council rejected the recommendation. “That doesn’t occur very often, and it probably won’t again,” Dygert said.

Howard Rubinroit, Smedra’s attorney, said his client would start building his long-stalled project as soon as possible. Rubinroit said the judge’s order made it clear Smedra was the victim of politics. “The EIR requirement was simply an attempt to mollify certain elements of the community--there was no other reason for doing it,” he said.

Rubinroit is also engineering Smedra’s legal attack on the city’s decision to require a environmental impact report of another Smedra project--a proposed movie theater complex on the site of a former lumberyard in Councilwoman Joy Picus’ district at Sherman Way and Hayvenhurst Avenue.