L.A. council OKs plan to concentrate growth in Hollywood A plan that could dramatically remake the Hollywood skyline and form the blueprint for denser development around the city's growing rail network has won unanimous approval from the Los Angeles City Council. Revised zoning guidelines for Sunset Boulevard and surrounding streets will make it easier for developers to build bigger and taller buildings, especially around subway stations and along bus routes. Supporters say the plan is a visionary change that will allow Hollywood to complete a 20-year-transformation from a seedy haven for drug dealing and prostitution into a more vibrant, cosmopolitan center of residential towers, jobs, entertainment and public transportation. But critics, especially those in the Hollywood Hills, say the new growth will spoil their million-dollar views and further snarl notoriously bad traffic. After the Council voted 13 to 0 Tuesday to approve the proposal, opponents said they would sue the city for failing to conduct an adequate environmental review. The plan's most significant change is an increase in the ratios of what can be built relative to lot size in the heart of Hollywood, especially near Metro Red Line subway stops. Ratios on some parts of Sunset and Hollywood boulevards would be doubled or more. That means that the Walk of Fame, which has already seen a boom in new residential towers, hotels and high-end restaurants, could soon see even more concentrated growth. Included in the plan are more pedestrian-friendly street designs and new parks. Elsewhere, limits would be placed on additional development in single-family residential areas and historic neighborhoods, as well as the Hollywood Hills. The push to channel growth around transit hubs has been dubbed "elegant density" by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who often talks of building a more livable and sustainable city. The concept can be seen in the boom of downtown condos over the last decade, and planning officials say it will guide city policy in transit-rich communities such as Woodland Hills and the Crenshaw district. City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who represents parts of Hollywood and who championed the plan, insists that the new guidelines in Tinseltown won't increase growth, only accommodate it. The neighborhood's zoning regulations were outdated and hadn't been updated since 1988, he noted. "If we could freeze-frame one year in Hollywood, 1988 would not be our most august year," he said. Martin Wachs, a Rand Corp. researcher and former city planning professor at UC Berkeley, said the strategy is a good one. "If we're going to spend billions of dollars to build a rapid-transit system, it only makes sense to put development there," he said. But he noted that concentrating development around public transportation doesn't necessarily mean fewer cars - as some officials have touted. While transit-oriented projects may reduce car trips regionally, they will not reduce traffic in the immediate area. "If you put more people in Hollywood, there will be more trips in Hollywood," Wachs said. That is what Stephen DeCordova fears. An actor who lives on a quiet, dead-end street not far from the Hollywood Bowl, he told the City Council on Tuesday that on many days, traffic is so bad that he can't leave his neighborhood. "We're going to be prisoners of our houses," he said. DeCordova and others said the city must do more to improve roads, sewer systems and emergency services if it pursues a strategy of denser communities. Officials said those kinds of infrastructure issues and projects should be addressed by lawmakers apart from the planning process. They said height restrictions will be raised on only two parcels of land, and said the public will still have a chance to weigh in on major developments. Larger projects will undergo a more rigorous review process, planners said. Bill Fulton, the vice president of Smart Growth America, a group that pushes for housing near public transportation, said the new guidelines have captured the public's attention not because they represent radical change but simply because they give a clearer picture of the growth that is expected to come. "It raises their fears because it simply raises their awareness that more development is coming," he said. A community like Hollywood is going to change no matter what. So the question becomes, 'How are you going to manage that change?' Fulton, who wrote a book on Los Angeles urban growth, said residents may be justifiably wary of what the new Hollywood vision could deliver. "Given the track record in L.A. over 50 or 60 years, people don't necessarily believe that something new is going to be better," he said.