OK Given to 69-Acre Hotel-Office Complex

A Los Angeles City zoning board voted Tuesday to approve development plans for Howard Hughes Center, a project expected to turn 69 acres of largely vacant land in Westchester into a hotel-and-office complex roughly one-third the size of Century City.

The project is designed to bring a 600-room hotel and at least eight high-rise office towers to property bordered by Sepulveda Boulevard and the San Diego Freeway. The site, where a single 16-story building is now under construction, lies below a community of bluff-top homes whose owners have waged a bitter battle against the project.

Arguing that 10- to 20-story office buildings would destroy their panoramic views and contribute to existing traffic problems in Westchester, homeowners sought to limit building heights to about six stories and to reduce the 2.7 million square feet of office space proposed for the project.

However, the City Council voted in January to support the project and the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously Tuesday to grant zoning variances that would allow high-rise office construction.

James D. Leewong, chairman of the five-member board, said zoning commissioners supported the existing plan partly because Tooley & Co., the Culver City-based developer of the project, has agreed to pay for $10 million in new freeway ramps near the site.

The Tooley company is acting on behalf of Howard Hughes Properties, the property owners and an affiliate of companies owned and controlled by the late billionaire.

In addition, Leewong said, the company might have been able to redesign the center in such a way that would have permitted high-rise office buildings without requiring city approval. He said board members had made a more careful study of the project after initially indicating that they would reject the project in January.