What Exactly Went Down In Burbank Over SB 35
- William Fulton
- May 16, 2022
- 5 min read
Ever since the first SB 35 project was proposed in Burbank last fall, many city residents – and their elected officials – have indicated that the developer would have a fight on its hands. At a special meeting in mid-April, the city council decided it’s not an SB 35 project after all. The developer has filed a lawsuit challenging the decision. After early skirmishes in the Bay Area, Burbank would appear to be ground-zero now for the fight over how to implement SB 35. So what’s going on?
The proposed project would build almost 100 townhomes on the site of the Pickwick bowling alley on Riverside Drive near the Los Angeles Equestrian Center along Highway 134. Nearby residents have opposed the project, saying it’s not consistent with the plans that the city has adopted for the area over the years. There’s nothing surprising about this; the so-called Rancho area near Pickwick has relatively large lots and there’s a large equestrian contingent in the area. (Rancho residents are allowed to keep horses.)
But there’s a dispute over whether residential development is allowed in the location – and, it would appear, an inconsistency between the general plan and the zoning ordinance. The Burbank situation is a good example of what can happen if cities do not maintain strict consistency between those two documents – especially in the context of aggressive state housing production laws like SB 35.
SB 35 permits ministerial approval of housing projects in some circumstances, assuming they meet affordable housing and labor requirements, in cities that are not meeting their regional housing targets. (See a collection of previous CP&DR SB 35 coverage here.) We’ve seen SB 35 fights in many cities, but most of the time the staff has made the determination as to whether SB 35 applies – a logical approach given that ministerial, by definition, means that city councils and planning commissions don’t get to review the project.
But not in Burbank, where the city council has adopted an ordinance giving itself the power to determine whether a project meets SB 35 criteria.
The run-up to April’s meeting was pretty contentious. As early as last August, Emily Gabel-Luddy – a Rancho resident, longtime and highly respected Los Angeles city planner, and former councilmember and mayor in Burbank – asserted that “the Pickwick site is not eligible for an SB 35 ministerial approval process.There’s no residential permitted on the Pickwick property, not in the Plan or in the .”
Then, in October, at the behest of Burbank’s elected officials, State Sen. Anthony Portantino wrote a letter stating that the Burbank staff had erroneously interpreted the situation. “It is my understanding that Pickwick requires a General Plan amendment in order for the ministerial approval provision of SB 35 to be relevant and applicable,” he wrote. Portantino voted against SB 35 in 2017, saying it would have a negative impact on communities such as Burbank.
After that, at its organizational meeting in January, the Burbank City Council took the unusual step of adopting an ordinance declaring itself, not the staff, as the final decisionmaker on whether a project conforms with SB 35.
Throughout all this controversy, the Burbank community development staff continued to take the position that, under the general plan, residential development is permitted on the Pickwick site and elsewhere and therefore the project qualified for SB 35 treatment.
