A key Potrero Canyon subcommittee took a step backwards last Wednesday evening so that the Potrero Canyon Community Advisory Committee can move forward. Faced with implacable opposition from west-rim residents along Friends, Earlham and De Pauw, the recreation subcommittee voted unanimously to rescind its April proposal to seek pedestrian access into the canyon from these streets. This allows the Advisory Committee to now focus on other equally contentious issues as it strives to produce a plan for the creation of a public park in Potrero Canyon, stretching one mile from the Palisades Recreation Center down to Pacific Coast Highway. (See related story, page 3.) The plan must eventually be approved by the Los Angeles City Council and the Coastal Commission, and will be funded through the sale of city-owned residential lots along the edge of Potrero. Meeting before the Advisory Committee’s regular monthly public meeting at the Rec Center, the recreation subcommittee considered four voting options prepared by chairman David Card. 1. YES to west-rim access and, if so, a second decision: Should the subcommittee decide NOW as to how many access points and where? Or should the affected residents decide how many and where, as long as there is one? 2. YES BUT LATER, with three possible timetables: (a) ‘After discussions with representatives of nearby homeowners? (b) after a poll of Pacific Palisades residents by mail? or (3) when the Phase III design work commences by the City’that is, after the sale of the two Alma Real lots and after the fill project re-commences?’ read the subcommittee’s advisory sheet. 3. If STATUS QUO, ‘take the west-rim access points off the conceptual design [proposed in April] and do nothing that would change the current status quo in that regard. Keep the west rim exactly as it is now (subject to lot sales, land transfers and land swaps), with the possibility of revisiting the issue much later in the development of the park.’ 4. If NO, ‘end of discussion.’ By this point in the meeting, several west-rim residents had already reiterated their position against canyon access, arguing that it would lead to a deterioration of their quiet neighborhoods by bringing too many cars into their already congested neighborhoods (especially by weekend beachgoers eager to avoid paying for parking below the bluffs) and giving transients easier access into their backyards. Given this continued opposition, subcommittee members rallied around the status quo option, which would allow for future action regarding increased access into the canyon. Said Rob Weber, an attorney who lives near the park entrance: ‘We have struggled as a committee trying to decide: How to provide more access into the park without these problems. People are scared. But if the problems do not materialize, maybe people will see what this park is all about and will want more access. Personally, I don’t believe the park is going to draw a large crowd [of out-of-town hikers] or attract the homeless’it will be used mostly by local residents.’ Chairman Card himself, who has promoted multi-access points along the west rim as a way to (1) ease parking demands at the Recreation Center and (2) ‘discourage crime and inappropriate activities’ by having ‘more eyes and ears of us walking through the canyon,’ said he would now opt for the status quo”in hopes that people will change their minds when we get down to the sale of the final two or three lots.’ After a motion by Huntington Palisades resident Susan Nash to support the status- quo option, the six-member subcommittee voted its approval. This action will be forwarded to the Advisory Committee, but as Card later told the Palisadian-Post: ‘Not that the result will be any different at the committee level, I feel, since the whole committee was sitting there as the subcommittee discussed the issue and voted and no one objected.’ Card added, ‘The motion’s adoption means it will eventually be incorporated into the concept design (both the drawing and the list of recreation uses and facilities), subject to approval by the Advisory Committee. ‘What’s left to be determined at the subcommittee level on the concept design is a final decision on parking/emergency access at Frontera (we’re waiting for the Fire Department comments on their emergency access needs). Also, the subcommittee needs to address some of the issues raised by the Joint Statement from the Huntington and rim area residents’a process we started at last week’s meeting.’
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