Builders Join to Help Calabasas Avert Gridlock

In most places, the construction of glossy office buildings earmarked to become headquarters for respected corporations is guaranteed to make local civic boosters beam.

But members of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce were doing more glaring than glowing Thursday as they took a close look at the new office structures that have begun replacing clapboard used-clothing shops and antique stores on their main street.

“I think Calabasas is out of control,” said Bob Lefton, president of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce. “That’s the best way I can put it.”

Meeting With Developers

Lefton’s assessment came as his 130-member business group met with local developers in an attempt to calculate the effect of new construction on their West Valley community.

The projects are bringing to Calabasas about 2.5 million square feet of office and light-industrial development. They include a 191,000-square-foot Lockheed Corp. headquarters and a 68,000-square-foot headquarters for Filmation Studios, a cartoon-animation company.

The developers were quick to acknowledge that they are contributing to the loss of Calabasas’ sleepy country ambiance and to its growing daily traffic jams.

Builders said the traffic problem is so bad that they have proposed setting up a voluntary assessment district so they can help finance future road improvements themselves.

Developer Lawrence M. Dinovitz described one of his new 84,000-square-foot buildings and conceded, “Most of its traffic will empty onto the already congested Calabasas Road.”

“We are in deep trouble,” said Jack Spahn, a veteran land-development consultant who is assisting with the Filmation project.

But, by chipping in through the payment of assessments of 50 cents a square foot, developers would help Los Angeles County finance road construction, Spahn said. “Developers should help because the county can’t do it. Everyone is creating the problem.”

Lou Muto, the county’s deputy director of public works, confirmed that talks are under way to create such a district or to levy “exactions”--also probably of 50 cents a square foot--from builders when they get county development permits.

Similar System Implemented in Saugus

Such a system was implemented in the Bouquet Canyon area of Saugus about four years ago to finance local road improvements, Muto said. The actual amount of Calabasas assessments would depend on developers’ own predictions of future traffic loads and street needs, he said.

“The idea at this point is to use the money for improvements to the Parkway Calabasas freeway bridge,” he said, referring to the bridge over the Ventura Freeway. “Nothing’s official yet, but we would try to involve developers whose projects will have an impact on that interchange. We think that work is going to be badly needed within five years.”

But chamber president Lefton said road improvements are needed now.

“We already experience gridlock on Calabasas Road every day,” said Lefton, an accountant who lives in nearby Hidden Hills.

“Merchants out here will tell you this area isn’t the utopia they’d thought it would be. It’s a bedroom community and people leave here during the day to work someplace else,” he said.

“With all the traffic to these offices, people can’t get off the freeway and in here to shop. As a chamber of commerce, we see this kind of growth as a terrible negative.”