The Los Angeles city government on Wednesday halted a developer’s efforts to build a luxury resort on a mountainside in the Benedict Canyon.

City planning director Vincent Bertoni notified developer Gary Safady that the city was withdrawing approval for Safady to build a 58-room hotel.

The decision marks a dramatic end to Safady’s quest to build the Bulgari Resort Los Angeles, a project that divided Benedict Canyon residents but received strong backing from business and labor groups.

Safady’s attorney, Mike Gatto, said his client has poured millions of dollars into the proposed hotel, which has been in the works for six years. The decision to shut down the project “sends a message to anyone looking to invest in Los Angeles that the city cannot be trusted to follow its own rules,” Gatto said.

Safady’s hotel was in the environmental review process after overcoming an initial urban planning hurdle several years ago. The developer envisioned dozens of bungalows, a sushi restaurant, a spa and a cinema for hotel guests. Hi

So

wanted to put eight homes on the site

varying

from 12,000 to 48,000 square feet each.

The 50 to 70 employees who would work at the hotel would be transported up Canyon Road through an employee carpool program, Safady said.

City Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district includes Benedict Canyon, argued that a hotel is not appropriate for the sensitive area of ​​the Santa Monica Mountains, especially given the increasing threat of hillside fires. She spoke about the development during her campaign for the city council last year.

After initially failing to convince her colleagues to shut down the hotel earlier this year, Jaroslavski managed to garner enough votes last month. The council voted 8 to 6 to ask the city’s planning director to intervene.

In a letter sent to Safady on Wednesday, Bertoni wrote that a hilltop hotel would be “inappropriate” for the project site, which has “sensitive habitats and areas that may be home to protected or endangered species.”

“While the Department of City Planning anticipated some impacts to the area, the magnitude of impacts identified from the initial study and further identified through technical reports and in consultation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, far from big. bigger than initially expected,” Bertoni wrote, adding that the hotel would too

conflict with

other urban planning purposes.

Yaroslavsky thanked Bertoni for his action in a statement.

This is a monumental victory for our mountains and sends a clear message that our hills are worth defending,” said Yaroslavsky.

The proposed luxury hotel had enemies and fans, including Save Our Canyons, who opposed the project, and Enhance Our Canyon, who advocated for it.

“This is great news,” Mark Levin, Benedict Canyon resident and founder of Save Our Canyons, said Wednesday. “This restores our collective confidence in local government.”

The move by City Hall to halt a development while it is still in the evaluation phase is unusual but not unprecedented. In 2016, the city stopped a developer from executing a plan to build hundreds of apartments

the

Cahuenga Pass.

Yaraoslavsky has said she expects Safady to file a lawsuit.

The leader of a group representing construction workers criticized the city’s decision in a statement. This move is a job killer. Plain and simple,” Ernesto Medrano, executive secretary of the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, said in a statement.

Gatto, the former state MP representing Safady, said Wednesday that the planning director’s decision is a direct response to a politician’s campaign promise. It is legally unprecedented.