Final Polish Put on Harbor Area Plan Before Vote : Zoning: The Planning Commission has fine-tuned a proposal for residential and commercial uses and has sent it to the City Council.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday took its last look at the revised Wilmington-Harbor City Community Plan, tied up several loose ends and--after more than six months of review--sent the complex document along to the City Council for final approval.

In their latest round of fine-tuning, the planning commissioners, who approved most of the plan in August, again confronted the harbor area’s patchwork mix of industrial and residential uses, particularly in Wilmington.

Their final set of recommendations pertained solely to that community. Among them were:

That several chunks of east Wilmington, now zoned for medium-density residential development and in some cases manufacturing, be zoned for single-family use, a designation that residents say will help them protect that part of town from urban blight.

That a so-called “historic preservation overlay zone” be adopted to preserve the character of the Banning Park neighborhood.

That Watson Land Co., which stores shipping containers on its property, be required to stack the containers in stair-step fashion away from residential areas. The company would be required to maintain a 75-foot buffer zone between the containers and Q Street, with the outer row of containers stacked only three high and none stacked higher than five.

That a triangular piece of property owned by the Department of Water and Power remain zoned industrial for another four years before being converted to commercial use. The DWP says it needs the land near the foot of Avalon Boulevard to store construction materials while it retrofits its nearby steam plant. But community activists want the property converted to commercial zoning immediately for inclusion in a waterfront development. The DWP has pledged to give up the land eventually.

That property owned by Gunn Van Lines, a moving and storage company on McFarland Avenue, south of Pacific Coast Highway, be rezoned to conform with the single-family neighborhood around it.

The move to rezone Gunn Van Lines came as a surprise to residents, as well as to Planning Department staffers--who had not recommended it--and to company officials, who were not present during the hearing at Los Angeles Harbor Department headquarters.

If the rezoning is upheld, the company will constitute a so-called “nonconforming use,” a designation that city planners say could force it to phase out its operation.

“We’re going to fight it, of course,” said company owner Dan Gunn, adding that company officials have been tracking the Planning Commission’s actions to ensure their land would not be affected. “At the last meeting we thought we were pretty safe.”

According to city planner Don Taylor, Gunn operates under a court order that says the company may do business at its current location--in an area zoned for duplexes--so long as the zoning does not change. The court ruling stemmed from a 1980 lawsuit against the city by the previous property owner, Swift Transportation Co.

In his report to the commissioners, Taylor recommended that the Gunn property be left alone. He told the commissioners Thursday that they would be “pushing Gunn Van Lines out” if they rezoned the land.

But when residents complained Thursday that the rest of the neighborhood was zoned for single-family use, the commissioners said it made sense for the Gunn property to be zoned that way as well.

“There’s a good planning reason for doing this,” said commission President William G. Luddy, acknowledging that the decision may prompt a second lawsuit.

When Thursday’s hearing was over, Luddy thanked residents, who have turned out for hearing after hearing since the plan was first presented to the commission in April. “You’ve put in a lot of time and effort on it,” he told about two dozen residents who showed up Thursday, “and I think you’re getting a good product.”

It has been nearly two decades since the current Wilmington-Harbor City Community Plan was adopted in 1970. The old plan left the two communities--and Wilmington especially--vulnerable to a pattern of development that allowed factories and heavy industry to crop up alongside single-family homes.

The new plan, which is designed to govern growth until the year 2010, attempts to correct that through rezoning and creating buffer zones. It also seeks to promote revitalization of Wilmington’s downtown business district, preserve open space and curb truck traffic.

Concerning that traffic, residents pressed the commissioners to include language in the plan that would call for construction of a “loop road” that would circle Wilmington’s neighborhoods, forming a clear truck route in and out of the Port of Los Angeles. But commissioners were reluctant to do so, saying the matter should be taken up by transportation officials.

Now that the Planning Commission has signed off on the document, it will be forwarded to the City Council for review by the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee. After the committee reviews the plan, the full council will vote on it.

Also Thursday, the planning commissioners delayed action on a plan to rezone industrial portions of North Gaffey Street in San Pedro, where residents are pressing the city to force out a scrap metal yard and oil tank farms.

The matter was postponed until Feb. 1 at the request of the city attorney’s office, prompting a complaint from a deputy to Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. The deputy, Mario Juravich, noted that the case was first scheduled for hearing before the commissioners last March.

“It has been delayed on and on,” he said.