A citizens group has filed a legal challenge against the city of Los Angeles for the City Council's recent vote denying the organization's appeal of developer efforts to raze a century-old apartment complex in Hollywood that includes units of affordable housing and replace it with a 10-story hotel.
United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles, a non-profit corporation formed to foster better planning and better government within Los Angeles County, brought the petition on July 8, asking Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant to order the council to revoke all permits and the granting of an exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act for the planned 10-story Whitley Hotel project.
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The development has a long legal history and on July 2 the City Council denied the group's appeal, with its members deciding instead to go not disturb previous votes by its Planning and Land Use Management Committee and the Central Los Angeles Area Planning Commission.
Developer Fariborz Moshfegh is behind the Whitley Hotel project and is listed as a "real party in interest" in the petition. A representative for the City Attorney's Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
As approved, the project would demolish six multi-family residential buildings, comprised of 40 affordable housing units, to develop the a 156-room hotel. The property at 1719-1731 Whitley Ave., developed in 1920, "not only currently serves as a vital source of affordable housing, but is also of potential value to preservation of the historicity of Hollywood, given its age, architecture and location within the boundaries of a proposed multi-family residential historic district," the petition states.
The full City Council did not hear public comment when voting to deny the United Neighborhoods appeal, the petition states.
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