A Town Divided Over a Building

La Canada Flintridge is not a town known for political dissent.

It is more of a peaceful refuge, where City Council candidates debate such woes as “mansionization,� where, as if in another time, spacious homes sit under old cedars and cords of firewood lie stacked neatly under the eaves.

The city’s schools are renowned. Its treasury has an $11-million surplus. And its setting is serene, with streets that tilt skyward, away from the sprawl, into deep, quiet folds of the San Gabriel Mountains.

So it would seem, in such a place, that politics would be a simple, genteel affair. And it usually is.

But not this year. Not when Norbert Olberz and his Sport Chalet project are at issue.

Several times in the last 15 years, Olberz has submitted plans to build his Sport Chalet corporate headquarters at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Angeles Crest Highway, the same intersection where he started his flagship store in 1959. And each time, he has prompted an outcry not heard since the Foothill Freeway sliced through town decades before.

Olberz’s latest proposal, to build a $32-million center, went through 34 public hearings. After more than a year, the City Council approved it in February and he was set to build. The 153,000-square-foot center would be anchored by his own sporting goods store and a Vons, flanked by smaller restaurants and shops, corporate offices and parking lots.

But opponents see the project as an oversize strip mall plunked down in the heart of town. More seriously, it means the potential erosion of a small town lifestyle-- already gone in most of the county--for which they have paid handsomely.

“We have this rural town concept that people spend millions to buy into,� said Patricia Blanche, who has lived in town long enough to remember when there was no Sport Chalet. “Sometimes I’m so grateful to live here. And no matter how selfish it is, I want to preserve it.�

The opposition group, which calls itself Friends of 91011, a nod to the city’s ZIP Code, quickly launched a petition for a referendum, and on March 2 ousted the council members who voted to approve the project. It was the biggest election turnout and ugliest campaign since 1990, the last time plans for the Sport Chalet Village came before the council. Olberz spent more than $13,000 on mailers attacking his detractors.

In the following weeks, Friends of 91011 sued the city to overturn the certification of the project’s environmental impact report and presented 2,233 signatures for the referendum. If the signatures are valid, the council will have to overturn its approval of the project or open the issue to a citywide vote.

All this rancor pulses through a city of 20,576 souls, where the last two elections were canceled because no one challenged the incumbents.

“This was a peaceful town until the anti-Sport Chalet group started hyping up a frenzy,’ said Jim Edwards, who supported the project and therefore recently became the city’s former mayor.

He, like others in this conservative hamlet, said Olberz had a right to build what he liked on the 11.8 acres he has long owned, so long as the development abides by zoning laws and the city’s general plan. They said the furor is pure NIMBYism that is preventing the ailing town center from being revitalized.

Indeed, Foothill Boulevard, the commercial backbone of La Canada Flintridge, is a wide, barren strip of traffic, faded storefronts and neighborhood shopping centers.

Edwards said the controversy is fueled by a lot of emotion and little logic. He recounted a recent California League of Cities conference in which he sat at a table with several other mayors and was told to describe his city’s most pressing concerns.

“I led with the Sport Chalet project and everybody laughed at me,� he said. “They said, ‘You guys don’t really have any problems in La Canada.’ �

Certainly, poorer cities that deal with violence and blight might see the issue as something akin to a 16-year-old complaining that his parents didn’t buy him the right color BMW. But La Canada Flintridge is a bedroom community raking in enough property taxes to make commercial development a superfluous diversion, and therefore quality of life issues reign--and make or break local politicians.

“The City Council needed to go and they were kicked out resoundingly,� Blanche said. “They were out of touch with the people.�

Instead of political lines being defined in such traditional terms as liberal/conservative, in La Canada Flintridge they are defined by the Sport Chalet.

“It’s really delineated the town,� said Kent Schmidt, a retired executive and vice president of Friends of 91011. “It’s the most prominent site in the city.�

In one twist of this year’s election, former City Manager Gabrielle Pryor filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that Councilwoman Deborah Orlik was acting improperly by participating in the Sport Chalet debate.

Orlik’s husband is an attorney at the firm that represents the development.

Orlik said because she opposed the project she did not have a conflict of interest. But headlines about the accusations landed on Olberz’s infamously biting campaign mailers, along with the banner: “Ethics Should Count.�

She still squeaked by in the election.

Olberz, who is in his mid-70s, would not comment about the ongoing skirmish. Yet even some of his opponents, excluding Orlik, concede that he’s a nice guy; he just has the wrong plan, they say.

The towering German immigrant has become something of a local figure since he and his wife, Irene, opened shop 40 years ago, picking a lot at the county’s main gateway to the mountains. Blanche remembered the couple loaning toboggans to local kids and giving out free ski boots and equipment.

He has since opened 18 more stores, forming a corporation with 1,448 employees and annual sales of $143 million. Over the years, he has acquired 25 homes around the original store and has planned on building his headquarters there since 1984.

In 1990, the plan became a hot button issue, facing organized protests and going through numerous revisions with the public. The election was brutal. Olberz mailed out flyers insinuating that one candidate was a slumlord and another played “fast and loose with the law� for her settlement in a malpractice lawsuit. Both lost at the polls.

When the project was finally hammered out that July, the City Council approved a quaint $25-million village with small shops and a European flavor.

But the recession hit and Olberz scrapped the plan--until this most recent round of fighting. In 1997 he came back with designs by the Pacific Palisades-based Arthur Pearlman Corp.

Pearlman said his design is not a strip mall and abides by the city’s general plan, which calls for a “village� atmosphere. Blanche disagreed, saying the town needs a style more like the faux-Danish village of Solvang near Santa Barbara, with winding streets, arbors and boutiques.

On one point, most agree: The battle will continue.

“I don’t see any end to this,� said former city manager Pryor. “The next round will be as divisive as this one. Because the picture that each of us has of a village is different, and will preclude everyone else’s image of a village.�