Garcetti picks new planning director

Pasadena official is nominated to helm office hit by legal tiffs with neighborhoods.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has chosen a Pasadena official to run the city’s Planning Department, a move that comes as neighborhood activists are growing more aggressive in their efforts to block large-scale development projects.

Vince Bertoni, head of Pasadena’s Planning and Community Development Department, was nominated Monday to replace Michael LoGrande, L.A.’s departing planning director. In his announcement, Garcetti said the city needs an expert who “brings both fresh ideas and an intricate understanding of our city’s complex planning process.”

Bertoni’s nomination must be approved by the City Council. If confirmed, he will take over a department that’s been hit with a series of legal setbacks.

Opposition groups in Hollywood have succeeded in recent years in overturning the city’s approval of a Target shopping center, a 22-story residential tower and the Millennium skyscraper complex. They also have forced the City Council to rescind approval of a sweeping development plan for Hollywood.

Those fights are expected to continue raging this year.

Hollywood-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its allies have drafted a ballot measure to place new limits on the city’s practice of changing planning and zoning rules for major real estate projects. LoGrande, who served 18 years, said he thinks “planning by ballot measure is a dangerous path to go down.”

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS nonprofit, voiced optimism about the change in leadership. During LoGrande’s tenure, developers could “build anything they wanted with any exemptions they requested,” said Weinstein, a leader with the Coalition to Preserve L.A., the group pushing the ballot measure.

“The fact that the new guy comes from Pasadena, where there’s a lot of attention to neighborhood integrity and a lot of attention to what the community wants, is a good sign,” he added.

LoGrande said he will stay in his post until the end of the month and become a land use consultant later in the year. He also disputed Weinstein’s description of his tenure, saying his agency regularly reworks major development proposals to assure they match the surrounding community.

Weinstein is “coming from an area of no knowledge,” he added.

Bertoni spent the last five years as Pasadena’s planning director. Before that, he worked in L.A.’s Planning Department, overseeing the creation of 16 historic preservation zones, approval of a bicycle master plan and the update of the Hollywood Community Plan.

Garcetti, for his part, said he hopes to meet with Weinstein and other activists to see whether a compromise can be reached without a ballot fight. He warned that the measure, if passed, could deprive renters of muchneeded housing.

“I would be concerned, first and foremost, about what that would do to depress the [housing] construction that we need for the average person,” he said.

Weinstein disagreed, saying the housing being built now is “beyond the reach of even middle-income people.”

“If they were actually building stuff that people could afford, you could make that argument,” he added.

David.zahniser @latimes.com Twitter: @davidzahniser Times staff writer Peter Jamison contributed to this report.