Excavation in Hollywood Hills
The Hollywood Hills straddle the Cahuenga Pass in the Santa Monica Mountains, and nearly all of them sit inside the City’s mapped Hillside Area and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. State maps put roughly a third of the neighborhood in earthquake-induced landslide zones, with the Hollywood Fault’s Alquist-Priolo zone along its southern edge.
LADBS decides whether a lot is in a hillside grading area from a specific document, the Bureau of Engineering’s Basic Grid Map A-13372, referenced in Building Code §91.7003. That designation changes several things at once. On the flats, excavation for a basement, footing or pool can ride on a valid building permit; on a hillside lot only caissons and piles get that pass, and everything else needs its own grading permit. In Baseline Hillside Ordinance areas, LADBS will not issue that grading permit until the building permit itself has cleared the ordinance review. We read the parcel’s ZIMAS profile before any design commits to a volume of soil.
Two thresholds shape most jobs here. Once excavation or fill reaches 250 cubic yards on a hillside lot, the code calls for a surety bond. Past 1,000 cubic yards, LADBS must mail notice to abutting owners at least ten days before it issues the grading permit, and the export itself goes to a haul-route hearing. Lots fronting a Substandard Hillside Limited Street carry a separate, lower cap on import and export under the ordinance, so the width of the street out front can matter as much as the size of the lot.
Outpost Drive, Beachwood Drive and the lanes branching off Laurel Canyon Boulevard are narrow and winding, and parking a truck on them blocks neighbors. Inside the Hillside Construction Regulation district, construction runs 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and Saturday is limited to interior work, so a dig has to be staged around those windows as well as the hauling hours. Smaller machines, shorter truck loads and a planned turnaround spot are part of how grading on a steep canyon lot actually gets done. Where a cut needs holding back, the excavation for a retaining wall and the caisson and footing work for the house are usually sequenced together so the slope is not left open longer than it has to be.
Over the ridge, Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino share Mulholland Drive with these hills, and Silver Lake and Echo Park lie to the east past Los Feliz.
Excavation and grading across the Los Angeles area:
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