Ventura Boulevard’s Low-Rent Strip Changes Its Stripes

Part of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City is a gracious, palm-lined shopping street that invites strollers and commands high rents. But that’s just the stretch west of Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

To the east--or more precisely, east of Carpenter Avenue, where the palm trees end--Ventura Boulevard is a kind of commercial poor relation. The cars move faster, there are few pedestrians, and some of the buildings have a ramshackle look. It is dotted with auto repair shops, a few vacant lots and motels with adult movies. Rents generally are lower.

It has been that way for years. But, slowly, things are changing.

Nobody’s planting palm trees east of Carpenter, but the gentrification is clearly under way. And, despite a proposed ordinance that could make building more difficult, the pace of development on this segment of the San Fernando Valley’s most important street does not appear to be slackening.

Several Projects Planned

New shopping centers, a large mall, new office space and several new restaurants are under construction or being planned between Carpenter and Lankershim Boulevard. Some are already completed. A few of the new projects are run-of-the-mill convenience centers with tenants such as dry cleaners and doughnut shops. But others are substantially fancier, with upscale eateries and shops.

At the same time, there are fewer of the motels that once gave the place a bad name, and that continue to be home for some low-income residents.

Perhaps symbolic of what is happening east of Laurel Canyon is the change of focus of Arthur Bender, a Sherman Oaks developer who owned the Hi-Ho Motel on Ventura Boulevard. Despite his denials, authorities had alleged the Hi-Ho was a haven for prostitutes. Using its “red light abatement” law, the city went to court to close the motel.

The court action failed--Bender said there was never a prostitution conviction tied to the motel when he owned it--but in April he knocked down the Hi-Ho.

Upscale Tenants

Now he’s putting up a $3-million, 16,000-square-foot shopping center on the site. Bender said tenants will include David’s Cookies and a yuppie-sounding bar called Residuals, aimed at studio executives working in the area.

Real estate specialists say developers like Bender are drawn to that end of Ventura Boulevard for several reasons. It remains relatively undeveloped, so land prices are not yet out of sight. But a Ventura Boulevard address is still coveted by retailers. And the residential areas on both sides of the boulevard are quite affluent, making residents attractive targets for merchants.

But the changes coming to the eastern boulevard have not been entirely welcomed by the area’s residents. Despite their relief at the demise of Bender’s motel, community leaders are wary of new development on the seedier stretch of the boulevard. They worry that traffic and parking will become impossible.

“We’re thrilled to have the motels gone, but we are concerned about the density,” said Jerry Hays, president of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce.

Changes Called Overdue

Nevertheless, most agree that a change on this particular stretch of the boulevard is long overdue.

For much of its length, Ventura Boulevard is prime real estate, and the stretch in Studio City west of Laurel Canyon has stores and restaurants that draw customers from a wide area. Monthly rents in that stretch are $1.75 to $2 a square foot, said Craig Stevens, a partner in the Studio City real estate firm of Zugsmith Associates.

In the strip development to the east, rents are in the $1 to $1.35 range, Stevens said.

“The neighborhood is crummy,” developer Aldo Genova said.

Nevertheless, Genova has built two office buildings on Ventura Boulevard east of Laurel Canyon, and his Alden Development Co. hopes to begin construction soon on a $50-million, 220,000-square-foot mall on the north side of Ventura between Eureka and Arch drives. His plans, which include a gourmet grocery store, restaurants, and specialty shops, conform to existing zoning and also will meet expected future development limits. The project also has won backing from a divided Studio City Residents Assn., despite some members’ concerns about traffic.

‘Catalyst’ for Area

“We felt it would act as a catalyst to upgrade the area,” said association president Daniel M. Shapiro, a real estate lawyer. “We are in favor of the improvement of that area provided we take steps to mitigate the traffic and parking effects.”

The Alden project is planned next to an existing shopping center that was a supermarket before it was renovated and expanded about 2 1/2 years ago. It now has a Computerland store, a health club, and a restaurant called the Midnight Rendezvous Cafe.

“That’s been incredibly successful,” said Seth Dudley, who specializes in Valley properties for Julien J. Studley Inc. real estate.

One tool in the battle against congestion is a proposed Los Angeles City Council ordinance that would extend a Ventura Boulevard high-rise moratorium east through Studio City. It would impose a three-story height limit on new construction, would require three parking spaces instead of two per 1,000 square feet of construction, and would set 1.5 to 1 as the maximum ratio of development square footage to lot size. The existing ratio is 3 to 1.

Stumbling Block

Community leaders, including Councilman Joel Wachs, who backs the measure, said they believe the ordinance will almost certainly pass. If it does, it will represent a stumbling block for Walter Asher, a Studio City developer who wants to erect a four-story, 93,000-square-foot office building on Ventura at Riverton Avenue.

Asher said that the $15-million project, which also would include some stores, won’t be feasible at less than four stories, and that he is hoping for a variance from the city that will allow him to build.

The ordinance is also likely to dampen property values, real estate brokers said. But Shapiro said it will merely cut down on speculation and help protect some well-established businesses that have been in the area for years.

Land prices on the eastern boulevard, which is zoned commercial, “have gone from about $20 a square foot to about $50 or $60 a foot in the last six or seven years,” Dudley said. He said there has been land speculation, but “it’s pretty solid speculation” based on expectations of future retail rents, which Dudley predicted would rise to $2 in 18 months or so.

Constraints of Nature

Aside from the new ordinance, Stevens said, nature already has applied a major brake on development in the stretch of Ventura Boulevard between Carpenter and Lankershim. Not far north of Ventura Boulevard is the Los Angeles River, and much of the land between the boulevard and the riverbed is so soft that it requires costly filling before it can be built upon. That can add $10 a square foot to the price of land that now costs $60 a square foot to buy, Stevens said.

On the south side, parts of the boulevard virtually sideswipe the hillside, leaving little room to build. And there are few north-south thoroughfares to take traffic to and from the boulevard.

But none of these things is a sufficient barrier, apparently, if there is enough profit to be made. Regency Western Developers, for example, is building a 30,000-square-foot shopping center on Ventura at Tujunga Avenue despite the steepness of the site. It simply slashed away part of the hillside and built a retaining wall to hold up the rest of it.

Pension Plan Building

Office buildings also have been developed on the eastern stretch of the boulevard, the biggest of which is an 80,000-square-foot structure built by the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan. It was finished early this year and is 75% occupied, mostly by the pension-plan administrators themselves, said leasing agent James Hirsen of Grubb & Ellis.

The motel owners likely will be among the major beneficiaries of the changes coming to eastern Ventura Boulevard. Lallu Patel, owner of the Arthur’s Hideaway Motel at 10740 Ventura Blvd., a block west of Lankershim, won’t say how much he paid for it in 1978.

But Patel said he’s been offered twice as much lately. And, he said, he’s not selling yet.