Housing project on Woodland Hills Country Club hits major road block due to mountain lions
A massive housing project on a Southern California country club’s golf course has been stalled due to the presence of mountain lions.The plan calls for turning part of the Woodland Hills Country Club, a century-old golf course near the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood, into a 400-strong housing complex.Newport Beach developer Arrimus Capital, which owns the country club, filed an application to redevelop part of the golf course with 398 homes.The proposed project would include 175 for-sale, three-story detached single-family homes; 189 rental apartments in a four-story building; and 34 rent-restricted apartments in another four-story building.It would also include more than 55,900 square feet of open space.Arrimus Capital was looking to use a state housing law that allows developers to bypass extensive city review processes for certain mixed-income multifamily residential projects built on commercial land, such as a golf course.But on Friday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to block the massive housing project, with LA councilmember Bob Blumenfield arguing that the property serves as habitat for mountain lions.“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 council member said in a newsletter to constituents.Blumenfield has also argued that the property is located in a “very high” fire hazard severity zone and that the state law being used to fast-track the development was not intended for projects like this one.
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