Council Adopts New Height Limits for Fences, Foliage in Trousdale Estates

The City Council unanimously enacted an ordinance Tuesday that creates height standards for walls, fences and hedges—which include trees—on hillside slopes in the Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills.

"This has been years in the making and it's clear that to the folks who live in Trousdale, views are really important and part of the reason why they live there," Councilman Julian Gold said. "This is an issue that demands relief."

Because some Trousdale properties are adjacent to lots under the jurisdiction of West Hollywood and Los Angeles, Councilman John Mirisch noted the possibility of "unintended consequences" of this adjustment to Beverly Hills' municipal code.

"We could have our residents subjected to thousands of dollars ... of work for the benefit of nonresidents," Mirisch said. However, he said he feels "very comfortable" with an amendment to the ordinance's legal language suggested by City Attorney Larry Wiener that would allow neighbors to work out agreements on view restoration among themselves without involving city code enforcement.

According to a presentation by Senior Planner Michele McGrath, the ordinance establishes the following height limits:

• Fences and walls on a downslope property must be no more than 36 inches above the immediately adjacent upslope property's level pad.

• Hedges not located in a downslope property's front yard must not reach higher than the "finished grade of the level pad on the immediately adjacent upslope property or 14 feet ... from the downslope property's level pad."

The ordinance also modifies the definition of a hedge to mean three or more individual plants, including trees "that are cultivated in a manner to obscure," McGrath said.

Mirisch had suggested that trees not be included during debate of the ordinance.

"One of the solutions I could have seen would have been leaving trees out," he said.

City law previously restricted the filing of a view obstruction complaint to only immediately adjacent residents, McGrath said. But now an upslope resident will be able to file a complaint based on a hedge- or fence-height violation on a neighbor who lives three houses down the hill.

Several residents spoke in support of the ordinance, citing the importance of hillside views to those who live in Trousdale Estates, while others voiced concern over the inclusion of height standards for trees.

Trousdale resident Michael Rosen claimed the 30- to 40-year-old pine trees that surround his property and stand 50 feet tall would be improperly threatened because of the city's new law.

"What's happening is a tree has now become a hedge in Beverly Hills and through the natural order of living with my neighbors, we've negotiated reasonable accommodations toward one another," he said.

Rosen explained that his neighbors pay to trim trees on his land that block their view and he pays to trim the hedges belonging to other neighbors to preserve the view from his property.

"What's happened now is that natural order of negotiation is going to be completely upset," said Rosen, who expressed concern over having to cut down and replace the pines at an estimated cost of $50,000 to $100,000.

Trousdale resident Frieda Berlin countered that "the reason we're here is that negotiation between neighbors has not worked," she told the council. "We spent 16 years visiting neighbors, negotiating, helping them, and it just doesn't work. There's always someone who doesn't want to cut the trees probably because of spending the money."

The council pledged to revisit the Trousdale view-restoration ordinance in 12 months to address any negative side effects of the law.

Be sure to follow Beverly Hills Patch on Twitter and "Like" us on Facebook.