The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to review the unfinished Target project at Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue on Friday to consider changes required to get the project back on track.

The city council will review plans on Friday that could lead to resuming construction on the Target project in Hollywood. (photo by Edwin Folven)

The previously approved Target project was halted in August 2014 after a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with community groups seeking to stop the development on grounds that it exceeded a 35-foot height limit for buildings in the area. An appeal of that ruling is pending. The building has remained vacant and incomplete for nearly two years.

In May, the city council approved an amendment to the area’s Station Neighborhood Area Plan (SNAP) that will enable construction to resume on the Target store. The amendment allows a 74-foot Target building at the location, which is zoned for 35-foot-tall structures. The change would pertain only to the Target site.

Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, 13th District, is working with Target to get work started again. Tony Arranaga, communications director for O’Farrell, said the review on Friday is a “procedural” final step “to ensure that Target can resume construction quickly and in the most legally defensible way possible.”

Doug Haines, a member of the La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association, one of the groups that initially sued to stop the Target construction, said the meeting on Friday will allow the city to publicly consider changes so they comply with the Brown Act, which guarantees the public a right to participate in public meetings. Members of the public can weigh in on the project at the hearing.

Haines’s association recently filed a second lawsuit against the project after the changes were approved in May. He contends that a new environmental impact report (EIR) is necessary because the project’s scope has changed.

He said he wasn’t sure exactly what will transpire on Friday, but he plans to proceed with the new lawsuit. No date has been set for when the lawsuit will be considered.

“It’s always been a three-ring circus when it comes to this project,” Haines said. “How it all plays out, I don’t know. The agenda is very vague.”

The agenda for the meeting on Friday calls for the council to certify an addendum to the project’s EIR, deny appeals to the project and adopt the specific plan change. Arranaga said O’Farrell remains committed to having the Target project open as soon as possible. It is unclear when construction will resume.

The matter is scheduled to be heard after 10 a.m. on June 24 in the John Ferraro Council Chamber, Room 340, Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N. Spring St.