Friends of Ballona Wetlands v. California Coastal Commission
Case Summary
After five years of hard-fought litigation, CLIPI reaches a landmark settlement preserving the Ballona Wetlands, Los Angeles County’s last major coastal marsh. Some 250 acres of wetlands and related open space are located in an approximately 1,000-acre parcel long used by industrialist Howard Hughes as an aircraft manufacturing facility. When Hughes died, officials of his Summa Corporation proposed a huge new development on the site, including high-rise office buildings, stores, hotels, residences and a marina. When the California Coastal Commission approved Summa’s Playa Vista plan, CLIPI went to court on behalf of the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands. Shortly after Maguire Thomas Partners becomes the lead developer, Nelson Rising, its then-project manager, agrees to preserve all key wetland areas, to fully restore the wetlands, and to dramatically reduce environmental impacts by completely redesigning the development project.
Additional Information
In the early 1980’s, the Summa Corporation unveiled its plans to develop the largest project in Los Angeles history — a mini-city with some 7,000 residential units, 3,600 hotel rooms, and 1.5 million square feet of commercial and retail development — at the site of the former Hughes Aircraft manufacturing facility, where the famous “Spruce Goose” had been built during World War II. Notably, the 1,000-acre development site included more than 200 acres of wetlands, of which only about 120 acres were proposed to be preserved, while a new road was to bisect them.
CLIPI went to court in 1984 on behalf of the Friends and other citizen groups, alleging that the adverse impact on the Ballona Westlands had not been sufficiently studied or mitigated. In 1989, Mafuire Thomas Partners took over control of the project and proposed to settle the litigation, agreeing to dramatically scale back the size of the project, to eliminate the controversial road through the wetlands, to construct a new freshwater marsh and to spend $12.5 million to restore essentially the entire salt marsh habitat. A total of 250 acres of wetlands and related pen space would now be preserved. Subsequent to the settlement, outside attorneys have assisted the Friends, and during the ensuing years all pertinent public agencies with regulatory authority over the project have signed onto the settlement and initial permits allowing preliminary construction have been issued. The project was recently modified to accommodate the new Dream Works studio facilities, and several lawsuits by dissident environmental groups have been successfully fended off. Maguire Thomas is presently negotiating to bring additional money and partners into the project so that, after further comprehensive environmental study, substantial construction activities on both the development and the wetland restoration can begin.
