Warner Studios Plan Glides Toward Approval : Redevelopment: Company’s concessions pave way for modernization project. Supporters hope facility will help declining neighborhood.
WEST HOLLYWOOD — Unlike two other Westside studio-expansion proposals, a huge modernization plan for Warner Bros. Hollywood Studios in West Hollywood is sailing toward city approval with surprising ease now that it no longer requires tearing down the storied Formosa Cafe.
City officials accustomed to watching residents and builders bicker over much smaller proposals watched in surprise as the project cleared the city’s Planning Commission last month with barely a whisper of protest. It goes before the City Council in November.
“There just isn’t anything that’s non-controversial in West Hollywood, and this is one of the biggest projects we’ve ever seen,†said commission chairman Jeff Richmond. “Sometimes it seems the level of interest is inverse to the importance of the issue.â€
Several factors account for the project’s recent smooth ride, including the studio’s conciliatory approach after an outcry last year over the Formosa and community fears that the studio might leave the city if not allowed to revamp the 11-acre East End site. But the project’s biggest ally is the hope that the decade-long development will spell economic salvation for a down-at-the-heel neighborhood better known for prostitution than filmmaking.
Expansion proposals by Fox Studios in Century City and Sony Pictures’ studio in Culver City are following a much slower course amid some neighborhood opposition to the plans.
Warner plans to convert the 73-year-old complex into a modern facility for filming and taping and the off-camera editing and other production work that goes into making movies and TV shows. Originally run by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks long before it took its current name, the studio was the production site for such TV shows as “Dynasty†and “Cannon†and, more recently, the movie “Basic Instinct.â€
The overhaul, which will cost as much as $75 million, calls for the demolition of five historic buildings on the lot and the construction of four sound stages and extensive office space--a 12-story office tower to be set back from Santa Monica Boulevard and a six-story building along Formosa Avenue. It also envisions more than 100,000 square feet of new post-production facilities and two parking garages with 1,855 spaces.
Unexpected protests forced Warner’s planners to back off from original plans to tear down the 50-year-old cafe--whose celebrity regulars included Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne--and demolish many other historic studio buildings. In response, Warner replaced its architect and hired a consulting firm to meet with residents and community groups--a public-relations effort that early critics say significantly improved the proposal.
Instead of razing the cafe to make way for a parking garage at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue, for example, Warner agreed to move the restaurant about 250 feet and retain it within the studio complex. And the newest plan will leave standing most of the lot’s 20 historic buildings.
“Someone in Warner realized that residents weren’t necessarily gnats that had to be swatted away,†said Jamie Wolf, a co-founder of the West Hollywood Urban Conservation League. Wolf, who called the project’s original design “schlocky,†ended up giving the commission a favorable review of the revised plan in August.
Some criticisms remain, though. Preservationists complain that despite improvements, the project will destroy too many historic buildings and endanger the studio’s eligibility as a national historic district in the future. The studio has no official historic designation now.
The Los Angeles Conservancy said Warner did not adequately consider how to protect more buildings by moving or rehabilitating them or building elsewhere on the lot. The group also criticizes renovations that it says alter the studio’s historic character.
Teresa Grimes, who heads the West Hollywood Cultural Heritage Advisory Board, echoed those concerns. She said the political realities--notably the economic importance of the expansion--put preservationists in the position of accepting a historic-preservation plan they consider incomplete or risk getting none at all.
Community leaders applauded Warner’s willingness to heed their concerns on issues such as street lighting and pedestrian safety along the studio’s long front wall on Santa Monica Boulevard. The new design includes openings in the wall to provide peeks into the studio and a “Howard Hughes court†outside to commemorate the former movie maker’s private entrance. A three-dimensional billboard on a parking garage planned for Santa Monica Boulevard was added in response to concerns that the building would be unattractive, said Jean Marie Gath, planning director for the project architects, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of Los Angeles.
With no homes adjacent to the lot, residents are focusing on the Warner project’s potential for fueling further development on the East End, where two other sizable building projects were approved earlier this year.
“We’ve got prostitutes and pawnshops and the Pussycat Theater (which shows X-rated movies),†said Tad Bright, an East End activist. “We want something to make it pretty.â€
“We’re desperate to get something going on down here because we’re the side that’s dying first in this town,†said Michael Radcliffe, president of an East End merchants’ group and head of the West Hollywood Community Alliance.
The city hopes the project will create jobs and spur sales-tax revenue through increased business. Warner Bros. has also agreed to pay the city a “benefit fee†of about $632,000 in exchange for being allowed to exceed normal city height limits on two its buildings. The studio is one of a small group of sites in West Hollywood officially targeted for large-scale development. Higher-than-normal building heights are permitted on these sites under the city’s General Plan as long as it creates a public benefit.
Warner will pay the city an additional $2.2 million in fees earmarked for affordable housing, transportation, open space and child care.
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