Last night I spoke with concerned residents about the proposed development at the Woodland Hills Country Club (WHCC). As I have outlined in previous postings (here and here) the developers are trying to take advantage of new state laws to build hundreds of housing units on the golf course in this very high fire severity zone without going through the regular city process, thus circumventing public review, environmental review and any Council discretion. The State sets the rules that the City must follow for certain land use decisions.
While my team and I are working with Senator Henry Stern on short and long term state level fixes to the unintended consequences of these new laws, I am also working on some creative ways for the City to extricate the WHCC proposal from this new state requirement that allows no review process.
The new state laws were signed by the Governor in October 2025, along with more than 40 housing related laws. Many of these laws are good and will make a positive impact on housing production. The ones that enable the WHCC proposal were not easily identifiable, headlined with unrelated topics such as community college housing. I only learned of these laws when I was told that the WHCC developers, days after the bills were signed, were applying to the City and citing these new laws to avoid the regular review process.
Then I immediately introduced a Council motion for the City Attorney to report about the true impact of these laws, whether or not the developer could legally use them to avoid our review process, and to outline any legal remedies to prevent them from doing so. This motion was introduced in December 2025 and can be seen here.
Specifically, the problematic new state laws are AB 2243 and AB 893. These bills amended an older bill AB 2011 which allowed high density multi-family projects to be approved ministerially on commercial corridors. That concept is not a problem. However, the recently passed subsequent bills, which amended AB 2011, redefined specific terms and allowed a huge expansion of projects eligible for ministerial/no input review. Specifically, the amending bills allow developers to take advantage of this ministerial process even if their projects are in a hillside/high fire severity zone, far from stores, restaurants and multifamily apartments. These two bills also stripped out other protections that were in AB 2011 designed to prevent its misuse.
Here are some of the AB 2011 protections that were stripped by the new amending bills.
- Originally, sites within “Specific Plans” had to abide by their terms. (Specific Plans are local requirements that govern development in specific geographic areas). In the Woodland Hills hillside, development is guided by the Mulholland Specific Plan which doesn’t allow multi-family development and the Gerard Track Specific Plan. These plans have been in place for more than 25 years and revisiting them would potentially undo longstanding environmental and density protections. AB 2243 made these plans irrelevant by simply saying that any Specific Plan that is more than 25 years old doesn’t count for AB 2011 related projects.
- AB 893 redefined the definition of a “site” so the City could only consider the area of the parcel “being disturbed” by construction, not the entire project site, the golf course. And since the underlying bill, AB2011, only applies to projects less than 20 acres, while the golf course itself is approximately 87 acres, the project still qualifies for AB 2011 processing since the project is broken up into three sites, each cleverly about 19.86 acres.
- The original AB 2011 bill only applied to sites where office, retail, or parking are a ‘principally permitted use’ and do not require a Conditional Use Permit (CUP). The City allows office, retail and parking - parking requires a CUP - in A Zones (the zone of the golf course. So originally the golf course was not eligible for the AB 2011 ministerial case process. But AB 2243 eliminated the requirement for a CUP for parking to be considered a ‘principally permitted use’, which paved the way for the project to utilize the AB 2011 ministerial process.
So what are we doing about it? In addition to the motion I introduced in December, my staff and I have been digging deep to come up with creative solutions.
Consequently, this week I introduced three pieces of legislation-
- One is a resolution asking the state to clarify the definition of ‘vacant site’ to make it crystal clear that it applies to golf courses, even if they have a club house and minor development. The current State definition is ambiguous enough that the developers think they can claim that the course is not on vacant lands.
- Another is a motion directing key city departments to clearly define vacant land as including golf courses even if there is a club house and minor development. Because of the ambiguity in the State law I think the City can provide a clarifying definition. This is something I believe we can do quickly.
- And the last one that is a bit of a hail mary, a motion to pursue a ‘street vacation’ on Canoga where the site is located. The idea is to legally make the street smaller than the 70 feet minimum which triggers the bizarre definition of commercial corridor in the new state bills. This legal route can take a long time and time and has additional hurdles including potential costs. Some constituents hope that this will be easy — I don’t know but am pursuing it at full speed to find out.
I am also considering an Interim Control Ordinance, which would take effect immediately, not to allow parking as a ‘principally permitted use’ in A Zones (Agricultural). If parking wasn’t allowed with a CUP in A zones, this project would not be qualified to use AB 2011. Ultimately, the City would change the Zoning Code permanently. I’m still working though the legal ability of the City to do this.
One bit of good news is that the City Planning Department has paused the developer’s application temporarily because certain documents are missing. This buys some time, but the new state laws give the City a 60 day shot clock to approve the project ministerially if all documents are provided. This temporary pause is welcomed news, but it is very much a stopgap that enables us to pursue all of these other creative avenues.
If you want to stay updated on next steps and how you can partner with my office on these issues, please fill out this form. And for more clarity and information on our efforts, or to invite my team to a meeting to discuss questions, you can contact my Planning Director Elizabeth Ene (elizabeth.ene@lacity.org) and Communications Director Jake Flynn (jake.flynn@lacity.org).