Scrambled Plans

WEST HILLS — Trafficanda Egg Ranch practically goes unnoticed among the supermarkets, restaurants, discount stores and residential developments along Sherman Way at Shoup Avenue.

The operating business--with egg trucks parked on a gravel driveway and its main house shadowed by mature oak trees--looks like a throwback to the days before the San Fernando Valley’s horse ranches, dairy farms and citrus groves were laid over by freeways, subdivisions and shopping centers.

Back in 1954, Joe and Marie Trafficanda ran the egg ranch where clucking chickens laid eggs right before customers’ eyes. Profits from egg sales helped the Trafficandas raise four children who became equal owners of the property after their parents died.

“The estate has been settled and they have to do something with the property,” said Paul J. Harder, a family advisor. “They are trying to keep it in the family.”

But the younger generation’s plan to build a household goods self-storage facility at the site has drawn ire from area homeowners who say they don’t want it in their backyard.

The Trafficandas are seeking a variance to build the 1,200-unit storage facility on a 2.5-acre parcel currently zoned for agricultural use. According to Los Angeles’ General Plan, the property’s zoning designation immediately reverts to residential when it is no longer used for agricultural purposes.

“They want to put a commercial building right smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood. This is entirely inappropriate,” said Ray Price, a retiree who has lived in the neighborhood for three years.

Family members, however, say the two-story, Spanish tile-roofed storage facility they hope to build would complement the existing apartments, townhomes and single-family houses that immediately surround the ranch.

The Trafficandas hired a traffic consultant and a real estate appraiser to assess the project’s effect on the community, Harder said. Their reports concluded that a self-storage facility would not have an adverse effect on either traffic flow or property values.

The family’s project also has letters of support from Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the Canoga Park/West Hills Chamber of Commerce and Calvary Church of West Hills, which abuts the egg farm. And nearly 480 residents have signed a petition in favor of the plan.

“Everyone thinks of an ugly building when you say self-storage,” Harder said. “But it’s a gorgeous building that we are trying to build.”

Even so, at a public hearing Wednesday before the Woodland Hills/West Hills Neighborhood Planning Advisory Council, the council unanimously voted not to recommend approval of the Trafficandas’ request for the zoning variance, saying the family failed to show that the property could only be developed commercially.

If the Trafficandas decide to move forward with an application for a variance and request a hearing before the Planning Department’s zoning administrator, the advisory council’s decision will accompany the application. Harder said late Thursday that the family was mulling whether to pursue an application.

“We are so happy,” said Hollace “Holly” Wood, who has lived next-door to the ranch for 15 years. “We were shaking in our shoes for the whole meeting, not knowing what was going to happen.”

Price, who spoke on neighbors’ behalf at the meeting, said he feared his presentation would be overshadowed by the opposition’s lawyers, consultants and architectural drawings. “They put on the most exquisite presentation I have ever seen.”

City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who created the neighborhood planning advisory councils in her West Valley district six years ago, praised the process and the outcome.

“I am so proud of not just the people who serve on the council, but the residents who got involved,” Chick said. “I am very supportive of their decision.”

Although she was pleased with the vote, Wood said she was not quite ready to claim victory over future development projects.

“The neighborhood is changing,” she said, “but we are still going to fight to keep it nice.”