Only stair access to lot of land - will I get permission to build? (Los Angeles: city hall)

[AdamFrisch]

Hi.

Maybe I'm googling wrong, but there seems to be surprisingly little info on city codes for building your own house on the internet for Los Angeles.

So here goes.

I'm interested in a little piece of land in the Hollywood Hills. I've spoken to the Department of Building and Safety and the plot is tentatively buildable. However, since the only access is through some rather steep stairs, it means that I will need an exemption for road access, road width and parking which is a City Hall public hearing thing and probably takes 6-8 months (and where all the neighbors will need to have their say). There's no guarantee that it will be approved (although such things have been approved before, apparently), which makes it a rather risky buy and a potential nightmare. Any house would have to be built solely by manpower access from the stairs.

The other option is to build the planned road that yet does not exist and get access that way, but that would be prohibitively expensive and not really an option.

Has anyone had experience with similar lots of land that have only walkway or stairs access? Was the approvals and dealings with the powers at be a nightmare?

Thanks.