Plan to Make Ventura Boulevard a Stroller’s Paradise Is Proposed

Ali Sadeghi works among the glassy office towers shooting into the sky along Ventura Boulevard. But that doesn’t mean he wants to hang out there.

With six lanes of traffic drowning out conversation, no place for sitting and few shops within strolling range, the sidewalk is populated by many more parking meters than people.

“There is no shade here. There are no benches. The street is not telling you that you should stop here and chat,� said Sadeghi, a doctor, as he surveyed the desolate sidewalk near his office. “I would call it barren.�

“Drab,� concluded his co-worker, Aaron Yoscovitz. “Very drab.�

Not exactly the look that city planners were going for when they christened this strip near Rubio Avenue a “pedestrian-friendly� area nine years ago.

Now, in an effort to make the San Fernando Valley’s main drag less of a drag for people on foot, officials are proposing a modest make-over for the Ventura/Cahuenga Boulevard Corridor Specific Plan, which governs growth along the 17-mile thoroughfare. If approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the change would spruce up the storefronts of businesses that move into five pedestrian-oriented zones.

The changes would affect only new businesses in the 4.6 miles of pedestrian-friendly turf sprinkled from Woodland Hills to Studio City.

But in a concession to property owners, the proposal would loosen other restrictions on the businesses allowed there.

Since the specific plan was adopted in 1991, retail businesses have been permitted to set up shop in the pedestrian areas. The stores that generate the most foot traffic--such as bookstores, coffee shops and ice cream parlors--get discounts in development fees charged by the city, said Dick Platkin, a city planner overseeing the area.

The proposed change would slash fees for many more businesses, including nail salons, cellular phone stores, copying services, grocery stores, pharmacies and travel agencies. The City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee unanimously approved the change last week.

“The main problem before is we had a tremendous amount of restrictions on whom we could lease to,� said Susan Comden, co-owner of the Tarzana Village shopping center. “We were hit with huge vacancies in our area during the recession. So we really don’t want to put ourselves in a position where we can’t take certain [tenants].�

The revised plan also would crack down on billboards, a persistent gripe among homeowner groups along the boulevard. Anyone who removes a billboard would have just six months to replace it, and owners would not be allowed to move the signs from one spot to another without city approval, Platkin said.

Planners hope that the updated scheme will foster a sense of community along a strip known more for its hodgepodge of mini-malls, restaurants and carwashes than for tree-lined pedestrian esplanades.

But the history of the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, as it was originally known, is pockmarked with miscalculations and diminished expectations.

Conceived during a 1980s building boom that overwhelmed the area with development and traffic, the plan called for $222 million in improvements, largely to widen intersections. Most of the money was to come from developers paying fees to build on the boulevard.

But as the economy soured in the early 1990s, developers rebelled at the high fees. Meanwhile, city officials discovered errors in the plan that overestimated the cost of improvements by as much as $74 million.

In 1996, the City Council approved a scaled-down plan that dramatically cut development fees.

As a result, the city has collected only $1.7 million from boulevard developers over the last nine years--including some money that may be refunded because of overbilling, said Nader Asmar, an engineer at the city’s Department of Transportation.

“We haven’t collected enough money to actually go out and construct a street improvement,� Asmar said.

Instead, the city plans to dispense $50,000 to each of the five communities along the boulevard to pay for streetscaping.

In Tarzana, plans in the works for more than four years call for erecting animal-shaped silhouettes on street lights, a jungle tribute of sorts to “Tarzan� creator and Tarzana founder Edgar Rice Burroughs.

So far, property owners have built five so-called “pocket parks�--each featuring a ficus tree, a boulder to sit on (in keeping with the Tarzan motif) and a small swath of brick-lined sidewalk. The “parks,� however, are about the size of a picnic table--and there’s no grass.

Though streetscaping was part of the original plan, the gradual shift in priorities has upset some residents.

“They’re spending all their time talking about street lights, the color of paint, paving bricks and whether they’re going to plant a ficus or some other kind of tree,� said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino and a member of the citizens advisory group that devised the boulevard plan a decade ago.

“But they aren’t discussing the original concept behind the plan--to facilitate traffic flow along the boulevard,� Silver said. “It’s very troubling.�

Lillian Wall, a developer who owns the Wall Street Plaza shopping center in Tarzana, said the emphasis on pedestrian-friendly areas will encourage people to get out of their cars and walk. To help convert drivers to walkers, Tarzana merchants are pushing city officials to build a parking deck in their area, like the one planned for Studio City.

With the right mix of parking, landscaping and alluring storefronts, boosters hope to transform the boulevard into a Valley version of Old Town Pasadena or the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. But even the plan’s authors agree they have a long way to go.