Ladera Heights Rezoning: Westside Area Plan vs. City Review

Drive west on La Tijera Boulevard toward La Cienega and you will pass the same strip of asphalt and low-slung storefronts that has anchored the Ladera Center for decades. Most people driving through do not think of it as a jurisdictional seam. But that parking lot is where two different governments have spent the last two years deciding, separately, how tall a building is allowed to be.

About two-thirds of Ladera Center sits in unincorporated Los Angeles County. The rest sits inside the City of Los Angeles. Same shopping center, same tenants, same cracked curb cuts, two zoning authorities. And as of this month, only one of them has finished deciding what comes next.

The Line Through the Parking Lot

Most of Ladera Heights is unincorporated county land, which means there is no city council, no mayor, and no city hall handling zoning, permits, or law enforcement. Those functions run through the County of Los Angeles instead. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, out of its Marina del Rey Station, patrols Ladera Heights along with neighboring View Park, Windsor Hills, and Marina del Rey itself. Building permits and land use questions go through the County's Department of Regional Planning rather than a city planning office.

That distinction rarely matters day to day. It matters enormously right now, because each jurisdiction is running its own separate process to figure out where that housing goes. Where those two processes overlap, at the edges of the county line, you get exactly what is happening at Ladera Center: one property, two rulebooks, two timelines.

What the County Already Decided

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in January 2025 to move forward with the Westside Area Plan, covering unincorporated Ladera Heights along with View Park-Windsor Hills, Marina del Rey, and several smaller unincorporated pockets. The board formally adopted the plan in March 2025. That plan is now the governing document for zoning across the county-side portion of the neighborhood.

According to Urbanize, the plan names specific parcels as "opportunity sites," even though nothing has broken ground:

• The county-side portion of Ladera Center itself, along Centinela Avenue west of La Cienega Boulevard
• The Wateridge Business Center on Slauson Avenue, just east of La Cienega
• The Home Depot site at Slauson and Fairfax
• Commercial parcels at Slauson and Heatherdale
• Commercial parcels at Slauson and Overhill

According to a County fact sheet, the early draft of this plan proposed building heights up to 65 feet, or roughly 4.5 to 6.5 stories, at Ladera Center. That number did not survive contact with the neighborhood. The Ladera Heights Civic Association, an organization that has represented residents of the 90056 zip code since 1955, pushed back hard through 2024, and its then-president Desobry Bowens told ABC7 News:

"There's a county plan and there's a city plan, and those two plans are competing, and they are adversely affecting us."

County Supervisor Holly Mitchell's office convened community meetings ahead of the plan's public hearing. ABC7 News reported that, after resident feedback, the county removed two proposed opportunity sites and lowered the recommended height limit at Ladera Center to 45 feet, or about four stories.

So on the county side, the picture is settled. Anyone evaluating a home near those corridors can look at an actual, adopted document.

What the City Hasn't

The remaining slice of Ladera Center, the third that sits inside Los Angeles city limits, falls under a completely different planning process: the Westside Community Plans Update, which covers four city planning areas including Westchester-Playa del Rey, the area that touches Ladera Heights.

That process is nowhere near finished. The City of Los Angeles issued a formal Notice of Preparation for the environmental review in February 2026, opening a public comment period that closed March 23, 2026. Earlier estimates for this same Westside Community Plans Update put the environmental review at roughly a year once it formally began, and that phase is now underway; a firm adoption date is not yet on the calendar.

Put plainly, if you draw a line down the middle of that shopping center's parking lot, one side has an adopted plan as of March 2025, and the other side remains in environmental review after its public comment period closed March 23, 2026.

What This Means If You're Comparing Streets, Not Just Neighborhoods

If you are comparing Ladera Heights to a fully incorporated city like Culver City or Inglewood, the practical difference used to be mostly civic: no city council meeting to attend, county services instead of city ones, a Sheriff's patrol car instead of a black-and-white LAPD cruiser. That difference now has a second layer. It determines whether the zoning rules that will shape your block for the next decade are already written down or still being negotiated.

Adoption is not construction, and the county's plan does not schedule a project.

On the city side, that certainty does not exist yet. If you are looking at a property near the city-side sliver of Ladera Center, you are buying ahead of a decision, not after one. That is not necessarily a reason to avoid the area. Ladera Heights Civic Association leaders including Tracie Lyons and Teresa Taylor-Bolds have been consistent in saying they are not opposed to development itself, only to density that ignores the character of a neighborhood of established single-family homes. It is a reason to ask more specific questions before you write an offer, especially if the property sits within a block or two of that corridor.

A local agent who reads zoning documents the way a paralegal reads a contract, checking dates, cross-referencing which plan actually governs a given parcel, and translating what "adopted" versus "under environmental review" means for a specific address, is doing real diligence work here. This is the kind of detail that does not show up on a listing sheet.

A Few Questions Worth Asking

Does the adopted county plan mean something will be built at Ladera Center soon? Not automatically.

How do I find out which side of the line a specific address falls on? The county's Department of Regional Planning and the city's planning department each maintain public zoning maps, and a title report will confirm jurisdiction. If you are seriously considering a property near Slauson Avenue, La Tijera Boulevard, or La Cienega Boulevard, this is worth checking before you tour rather than after you fall for the house.

Does unincorporated status affect my property taxes? Not directly. California's property tax mechanics under Proposition 13 apply the same way whether a home sits in unincorporated county land or inside a city. What differs is which agency handles permitting, zoning, and law enforcement going forward, which is the distinction this whole story turns on.

Ladera Heights has weathered zoning fights before and the neighborhood's character, its wide lots, its mix of Old Ladera ranch homes and midcentury design, has held through them. What is different this year is that half the picture is now a matter of public record and half is still being written. Knowing which half your address falls into is the kind of detail that belongs in your decision before it shows up in your escrow file.

If you are weighing a purchase near Ladera Center, or trying to figure out what a specific parcel's zoning status actually means for resale five or ten years out, that is exactly the kind of contract-level reading Vertice Williams does for clients before an offer goes in, not after. Let's Make Your Move Happen.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.