La Cañada Flintridge Developers Sue for Project Approval

Two weeks after an L.A. County judge issued a ruling on La Cañada Flintridge’s housing plan that carries major implications for the legal provision known as builder’s remedy — and practically invited the developers at the center of a noxious, long running saga in the city to initiate their own litigation — the project team has filed its lawsuit against the city in an effort to finally gain approval for its project.

“We’re not building a huge skyscraper. This is a very modest proposal. … The fact that we’re having to resort to lawsuits to get something like this to even be considered fairly is asinine,” said Alexandra Hack, principal at Cedar Street Partners and one of the project developers.

But the suit — which stretches 430 pages, including exhibits, and meticulously outlines the yearslong development saga and various opponents’ and city officials’ actions against it — was necessary, Hack and another partner, Garret Weyand, emphasized, because of the extreme measures the city has taken to block the project, including repeated denials that violate state housing law.

“We’re fighting fire with fire, I guess,” Hack said.

The city’s mayor and a planning official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new suit.

Follow-up litigation

The lawsuit follows a ruling earlier this month on another suit brought against La Cañada Flintridge by Californians for Homeownership, a nonprofit affiliated with the California Association of Realtors that frequently files pro-housing lawsuits against cities. In that ruling, the judge determined that the city’s housing element, or state-mandated plan to build homes, did not meet the threshold for compliance because the city had not completed a required rezoning. That decision effectively shot down La Cañada’s strategy of “self-certifying” its own housing element to skirt the state penalty of builder’s remedy, a legal provision that stipulates approval of housing projects if they contain a certain threshold of affordable units.

“This is a major win for housing,” Jennifer Branchini, president of the California Association of Realtors, said in a statement following that ruling. “For far too long, certain cities and counties have treated compliance with state housing laws as optional.”

The judge also declined to issue an explicit declaration that builder’s remedy applies in the city, because Californians for Homeownership didn’t have the proper legal standing. He suggested, however, that a developer with a pending project would have standing — effectively paving the way for the La Cañada developers to file their own suit.

Earlier this month, in response to the original lawsuit, La Cañada’s mayor provided TRD with a statement that said, in part, that the city could not comment on pending litigation but that it was “ready to implement its identified housing programs” and “committed to supporting the statewide effort to tackle the ongoing housing crisis.”

The developers’ new legal complaint was filed late last week in L.A. County and names the city, City Council and city development department as defendants. The suit seeks multiple writs, including court orders that would declare that La Cañada Flintridge is violating state housing law and is subject to builder’s remedy and that would compel the city to adopt a new housing plan and complete a rezoning.

Most importantly, the developers want an order that would compel city officials to approve their five-story, 80-unit project after months of repeated denials and escalating tension between the city and state authorities, who also have asserted the city is violating state law.

“We want approval; we want this done and we want to move on,” said Weyand.

“Deny, delay, prevent”

Central to the lawsuit are allegations that city officials have not only broken state housing laws but repeatedly “demonstrated bad faith” as they’ve continued to breach housing policy compliance and deny the developers’ builder’s remedy application. The suit includes public information requests that reveal that one relatively new councilmember, for example, was actively coordinating with the project’s main community opposition group; it also cites statements made by the mayor and city attorney in public meetings that are misleading or demonstrably false.

“California is facing a housing crisis of unprecedent[ed] proportion,” the suit begins. “Meanwhile, the City of La Cañada Flintridge and other respondents are doing everything in their power to deny, delay, prevent and make financially infeasible any new mixed-use or multifamily housing.”

The city has 30 days from last week’s filing to issue a legal response.