Some years ago, the Woodland Hills Country Club in Los Angeles County sold its 94-acre golf course.
Today, hundreds of local residents are flocking to meetings and rallies to stop a 398-home project on 20 acres of that land.
One of the opponents was a member of the club when it decided to sell. “We needed the money,” he told another person at one opposition meeting. But the buyer was a developer, Arrimus Capital of Newport Beach, so the proposal could not have been a surprise.
What was a surprise — at least to the furious locals — is that the project apparently does not need the usual public hearings, environmental reviews and political approval that have made Los Angeles one of the tightest and most expensive housing markets in the nation. For this very reason, the fast track was created in the past four years by state legislation (AB2011 and AB2243).
NIMBY fights are usually about size and affordability, but these issues mean very different things in different places, as the Woodland Hills fight shows.
In New York City, rezonings tend to be for multifamily buildings in progressive neighborhoods, where opponents demand shorter buildings and more affordability.
In suburban areas, opponents tend to be single-family homeowners who want projects to have fewer units and less affordability, because they fear traffic and poor people.
The Woodland Hills project will have 97 affordable apartments, most of them for seniors. Another 175 homes will be single-family and 126 will be apartments. It adds up to 76 percent market-rate and 24 percent affordable, which in Crown Heights would have people screaming “gentrification!”
The NIMBYs of Woodland Hills — a community of 80,000 people — are mostly aghast at the idea of having about 800 new neighbors. This 1 percent population increase, they say, would cause gridlock in the event of a fire disaster like the one they witnessed from their cul-de-sacs last winter.
I am not persuaded. If there’s gridlock during a fire, 99 percent of it would be caused by the current residents. If the situation were as dangerous as they claim, they would be moving out en masse, or the government would be condemning their homes. That isn’t happening.
What we’re thinking about: Will Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposals to address rising insurance costs for multifamily housing amount to anything? What about her promise to reform J-51? See pages 32 to 35 of her State of the State Book and send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: If you have a New York building with large refrigeration equipment, you must report its leakage rate to the state Department of Environmental Conservation in March or face a fine of up to $2,500 plus $500 per day after that. The deadline for medium-sized equipment is June. The idea is to curb leaks that contribute to climate change.
Elsewhere…
Rent control, a poster child among economists for the wrong way to address housing affordability, could be returning to Massachusetts — not because socialists have taken over the legislature, but because a proposal appears destined for the statewide ballot in November.
One poll found 63 percent of voters would support and only 31 percent would oppose the proposal, which would cap rent increases at 5 percent a year or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.
Housing guru Jay Parsons is raising alarms.
“Massachusetts voters banned rent control in the 1990s due to numerous unintended consequences. Studies by MIT and Harvard later showed the REMOVAL of rent caps led to reduced crime, improved building maintenance and improved property values,” he posted on LinkedIn.
“But this is a new generation of voters — few of whom likely remember the reasons they banned rent control three decades ago.”
Closing time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Tuesday was $8.15 million for a 4,440-square-foot townhouse at 409 Sackett Street in Carroll Gardens. Ellen Gottleib and Neely Johnson with Corcoran had the listing.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $141 million for the 283,465-square-foot, 19-story office building at 3 East 54th Street in Sutton Place. Cohen Brothers Realty sold the property to Vornado.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $11.75 million for a 7,000-square-foot townhouse at 416 West 51st Street in Hell’s Kitchen. Clara Chung with Douglas Elliman has the listing.
— Matthew Elo