Mountain lions stall plan to build 400 residences on Woodland Hills golf course

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Set us as preferred The mountain lions have won the day in Woodland Hills, as oppostion to building nearly 400 residences on a local golf course stalled a real estate developer’s plan to turn the private club into a residential community.Woodland Hills Country Club, a century-old golf course near the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood, can keep letting cougars cruise the fairways at least for the near future, City Councilman Bob Blumenfield said, as he helped stymie efforts to fast-track approvals of the proposed housing complex.The owners of the country club, Newport Beach developer Arrimus Capital, hoped to get the project underway quickly by using the provisions of a state housing bill intended to let builders bypass lengthy city review processes for mixed-income multifamily residential developments on commercial land, such as a golf course.Not so fast, Blumenfield said in a recent statement.Mountain lions have the right of way, and city staff agrees.

“Due to a plethora of documentation from neighbors and a lot of biological and ecological research provided by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other biological experts, the Planning Department just determined the Woodland Hills Country Club site is ‘wildlife habitat’ for the endangered Mountain Lion,” the councilman said in a newsletter to constituents.The developer was on track to bypass the city’s normal discretionary review process by using AB 2011, a newly revised state law that forces the city to approve such projects outright, Blumenfield said.That would mean that community input, environmental impacts and fire safety could not be considered prior to approval.

Blumenfield had raised objections to that quick ministerial approval, citing the golf course’s location in a “very high” fire hazard zone and asserting that...