I am writing you after being at the Planning Committee meeting on Thursday, Aug. 10.
I had no idea that two lovely homes on Flintridge Drive, a small street just off Flintridge Avenue, are a dead end.
At the Planning Commission meeting, we heard that one home at 882 is already in use with many unrelated people living there. For the last two years, the [property] at 888 Flintridge Drive has had young men, who are being given free rent while they train at a seminary in the San Fernando Valley [to become pastors] and also have many meetings and events at the home with lots of cars. The two properties are owned by the same person who is a La Cañada Flintridge resident and realtor.
The owner of 882 and 888 was proposing a project to turn the empty attic space at 888 and build a second level to add eight more bedrooms and cater to more men studying at the seminary.
The owners of the other homes, who have lived there for quite a while, realized that their privacy and quietness is now being challenged. This is not what they planned when they bought their property. Apparently, the Planning Commission felt it would be fine [since the property was considered a single-family household]. When we heard what this group of homeowners said, we waited and realized what would happen.
This part of La Cañada Flintridge is not on sewers and with all the added people in these homes, there is bound to be septic problems all around that area, with the change in value for the regular owner’s properties. The [surrounding homeowners] bought in this neighborhood for the quietness and what they desired and should not let the Planning Commission change everything.
By the end of the meeting, the owner gave up the changes he asked for after hearing feedback from the public. We residents now wonder what’s going to happen next since the commission did not cancel the permit.
But after clearing out that upper house, it was just an attic area. Will it be used again? How could the Planning Commission approve something for one person and not see how it would impact the rest of that small area?
Dorothy Juett
La Cañada Flintridge
First published in the August 31 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
