MUCH ADO ABOUT MCMANSIONS: TAKE IT FROM A VICTIM: SIZE LIMITS ARE NEEDED.

Byline: Brad Dickson Local View

THERE'S a war brewing in the San Fernando Valley between those who think a house should be the size of a house and developers who feel it's OK if it's as large as a bowling alley.

Score one for traditionalists. The Los Angeles City Council has given formal approval to an ``anti-mansionization'' ordinance for Sunland-Tujunga, the first time the council has specifically addressed restricting home size in Los Angeles.

Mansionization is loosely defined as the process whereby a traditional home is demolished and replaced by one resembling a Home Depot. This phenomenon began about five years ago and has gained momentum in the past year. I personally became a victim of mansionization in 2002 when I received a polite note from a neighbor apologizing for any ``sleight inconvenience'' due to ``renovations'' on his nondescript one-story. I awoke the next morning to find a 60-foot crane in my driveway.

Considered by many to be the most ambitious building project in the West since the Golden Gate Bridge, my neighbor's house is garish enough to have been designed by the architect who conceived Saddam Hussein's palaces, with help from a blind radical cleric.

Combining the square footage of a Virgin Megastore with the curb appeal of a Russian meatpacking plant, the home sits amid a row of ranch houses, sticking out like a 747 at a Mini-Cooper dealership. Rumor has it the owner rented the home to a film company for a month; the exterior will portray the Pentagon circa 1946. The guy built the house to the edge of the road, and I'm sure he considered extending it into the street, with enough hubris to expect oncoming traffic to maneuver around his foyer.

But that's far from the only example of mansionization. A few weeks back, this newspaper featured a front-page photo of a new Valley Glen private residence that I initially mistook for the Morongo Casino.

In introducing the anti-mansionization motion, City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel cited quality-of-life issues when McMansions - the buzz word given these houses-on-steroids - go up. With original Valley bungalows now sometimes flanked by McMansions, it looks as though the Hiltons and Gettys decided to build on either side of the Unabomber's shack.

Greuel also cited privacy issues when the supersize homes creep within feet of the house next door. I know my neighbor's children's names and about his one extramarital affair and his battle with acid reflux, and I've never met him; those are things I've overheard through open windows.

I miss the old San Fernando Valley. Remember when lots weren't overbuilt and houses had lawns? Now Valley front yards appear to be going the way of the dinosaur, the Edsel and Robinsons-May.

Under terms of the proposed new rules, homes built on lots of 8,000 square feet or less are limited to 40 percent of the lot size. Greuel emphasized that aesthetics and taste are not being regulated. That means your W.C. Fields roof statue that looks like Fields is relieving himself as he waters the garden when it rains is protected by the First Amendment, just as our Founding Fathers intended.

Kudos to the City Council, although I suspect that members only passed the ordinance out of concern that McMansions may be large enough to one day host professional lap dancing. Today Sunland-Tujunga, tomorrow the world. (That's if you're defining ``the world'' as Valley Glen and Valley Village.) The City Council should expand the ordinance to additional areas.

As for me, I'm currently flanked by two McMansions; thus I'm a ghastly shade of pale as my yard is basically cut off from the sun. I have no peace, for my two cats always think it's night, so they mate around the clock.

Until that day I can't help but sell my home for the lot it's built on, I'll fight mansionization and its ugly intrusion upon my property. I have that inalienable right, because in the San Fernando Valley, a man's tear-down is his castle.

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drawing

Drawing:

(color) no caption (homes, mcmansion)

Staff Illustration/Jorge Irribarren