Horse Sense

Illustration by Ken Garduno

By 7:30 a.m., the distinctly sweet smell of teriyaki sauce wafts over the deserted parking lot, courtesy of Yaki’s The Original Teriyaki Bowl, and, with the 134 Freeway roaring just around the corner, a steady stream of boulevard traffic has begun building towards its morning rush-hour crescendo. The day starts early at the corner of Burbank’s Main Street and Alameda Boulevard, and it bustles all day long.

Within moments, Roman Gora pulls up and pops out of his nondescript black-gray sedan. He’s talking before the door even slams behind him. “It’s important to know that some members of the community who initially supported the development are under the impression the building will stay the same, that Whole Foods will just have a cute little store here,” he begins. “They’re not.”

Today, much about Gora, a shortish man with boyishly round features, is gray – his thick, gray-brown, quasi-bowl-cut hairstyle, his black-and-gray-checked flannel shirt, the metallic gray of his wire-framed glasses. “I’m not an activist,” he says repeatedly. “I don’t know how to do these interviews.” When he admits that his group, essentially an unofficial assemblage of neighbors who deputized him to lead their charge, is not even yet sure who to approach in their city council office, one is inclined to believe him.

But Gora et al are on a mission: to fend off a proposed 60,000-square-foot Whole Foods development to be located at the intersection of Main and Alameda in a commercially-zoned swath of the Rancho Equestrian district. According to Gora, he and his group have no intentions of shying from this David-vs.-Goliath fight.

In late October, Burbank’s planning department issued a 32-page memorandum detailing why, after studying the issue and sponsoring an August 21 community meeting on the matter, it happily recommended the city approve Whole Foods’ proposal. Seeing its dimensions as in line with nearby supermarket behemoths Pavilions and Ralphs while offering an appealingly healthier alternative, the city found the setback variances and conditional-use alcohol permit requested didn’t impose excessive concessions on the unique equestrian district that surrounds the proposed development.

However, the Rancho Equestrian area sees it – and itself – a little differently. For decades protected by improbable zoning regulations allowing residents to stable horses in their back yards and offering an inimitable opportunity to commute via horseback along designated routes leading directly up into the equestrian trails of Griffith Park, the Rancho “is one of the most special neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” Gora says, calling it a tight-knit community full of long-term residents and long-standing tradition. To preserve its character, until 1997 grocery stores weren’t even permitted within its boundaries, only “specialty food stores.”

Yet such an upscale bunch of nature-lovers would appear a perfect constituency for a socially conscious enterprise like Whole Foods, and, in fact, Gora says they are. “We all love Whole Foods,” he says. “We just love our families and community more. This is not the place for a store of this size.”

On any given evening, Gora says, traffic – never light – comes to a standstill here while drivers queue up to enter or wind away from the freeway. “We’re already seeing cars cutting off horses. It’s dangerous, they’re animals, they get spooked,” he says. Gora charges that the proposed design, with its entrances and exits limited to two, setbacks trimmed to abut sidewalks, and underground parking structure to replace the existing parking lot, is a virtual recipe for further clogging the congestion. Add to that the cars which will use the existing bike/horse lane as an overflow option and that cyclists will likely increase in the vicinity of a Whole Foods. “Mixing horses, bikes, and cars is a disaster,” he says.

It’s more than a sheer numbers game, though, he continues. A Whole Foods in particular and a Whole Foods of this size would specifically compound the issue. Company representatives did not respond to CityBeat’s requests for comment, but aspects of their position were laid out in the planning department memo. There, Whole Foods maintained they could provide an unequaled retail resource for the community. Gora counters that his community was the last thing on corporate minds. “If you look where they dump their stores, they’re trying to be regional draws,” he says. “We already have that problem with Pavilions.” And the consequence, he says, is not just more cars on the roads, but also more drivers on and off the major boulevards who don’t know they’re speeding through an equestrian district. “There have been a lot of close calls,” he says.

It’s a compelling list of public safety concerns, to be sure, but in their development application, Whole Foods originally won over the city partly by presenting it with their own persuasive batch of pro-development public sentiment, reporting that of the 480 announcements mailed out, 471 came back in favor of the market, five requested more information, and a mere four opposed. They also report receiving 23 e-mails, 20 of which were in favor of the market, and a grand total of three asked for more information or expressed a “partial” opposition.

Gora, who for the past 14 years has lived a few blocks south of Alameda and Main, wonders why he never received one. In what has become a common complaint among local communities sparring with developers, Gora charges Whole Foods’ outreach has the appearance of intentionally avoiding engaging those most impacted by the proposed development.

According to Avital Shavit, an assistant city planner assigned to the project, the company’s efforts at public dialogue were in keeping with code requirements, and notes Whole Foods went beyond those requirements by scheduling a second community input hearing when further opposition surfaced. It was at that second meeting, held late last month, that the planning board determined it was no longer comfortable that Whole Foods’ application was compatible with the Rancho’s aesthetic. “They have a set of findings they need to make to approve a project, and they couldn’t make the necessary findings,” Shavit says. At that time the board offered to continue studying the matter, but “the applicant wanted an immediate vote,” she says. As a result, the board voted down the project and Whole Foods made known their intention to appeal directly to the city council.

Even now, if Whole Foods shows up in council chambers for their tentatively scheduled December 12 hearing with an amended proposal, one scaling back the store’s scope and dedicating horse-only lanes on its periphery, Gora says he and his neighbors will be the first to welcome them to the neighborhood. But repeated attempts at communication between the parties has left him with the impression that concessions are not forthcoming.

“We’re finding they’re saying, ‘This is our development, take it or leave it,’” he says. “But we want to say, ‘This is our community, take it or leave it.’”

As Los Angeles well knows, in the world of urban planning, missteps can linger for decades, permanently altering the character of a place, and as the developer’s appeal progresses toward its final authority, Gora wants to make sure his councilmembers understand the consequences their decision will have on his community. “This development could set a standard [and then] it’s only a matter of time before it’s no longer safe for horses here,” he says, adding, “If the city makes a mistake, they never remove it.”