Design Center Expansion Plans Given Tentative OK; Parking Concessions Made

The West Hollywood City Council has approved in concept the Pacific Design Center’s plans for a major expansion of its offices and showrooms, and in a separate move last week, the center’s director made concessions to neighbors concerned about the project’s impact on parking and traffic congestion.

Although the project still requires final council approval, the unanimous decision last Thursday marked a crucial step forward.

“The (center’s) concept is very exciting,” said Mayor John Heilman before casting his vote in favor of the expansion. Heilman said he had hoped to take more time to discuss the plans for a “project of such magnitude and importance” but voted for it anyway.

The center’s executive director, Murray Feldman, has said he was eager to begin lining up financing for construction of a project expected to eventually cost more than $150 million.

The vote “allows us to keep to our schedule,” said Feldman, who expects construction to begin on the interior design center next June and be finished by March, 1987. “We can breathe a little easier now.”

Under the project, the 725,000-square-foot center--a massive drum-shaped blue building known as the “Blue Whale”--would be expanded to four buildings and more than 1.6 million square feet. Two new buildings--one a nine-story green structure and the other an eight-story maroon structure--would be added, along with a gray, seven-level parking garage.

Changes in Garage Design

Residents of the surrounding neighborhood have criticized the expansion plans, both for the dominating size of the planned buildings and the impact they would have on traffic and parking in the area.

Some of their concerns may have been allayed last week when Feldman made several concessions which could alter the shape and design of the garage and alleviate some parking problems.

Feldman offered to revise the design of the garage, enclosing upper levels that would have been open to public view and setting it back further from neighboring houses. The changes in design could cost the center as much as $750,000, Feldman said.

At the council session, Feldman also offered to allow motorists who used the center’s new garage to park free for the first 20 minutes. The proposition came in response to neighbors’ fears that the center’s visitors would clog nearby streets instead of paying at the garage.

“We’re willing to reduce our own annual income by $350,000 to make this offer,” Feldman told the council.

Most leaders of neighborhood associations near the center said they were pleased with Feldman’s proposed changes. “What we have now is a mitigated disaster,” said Peter Freed, whose home on Huntly Drive would face the planned garage. “The concessions will help even though we’re still not happy with the massiveness of those buildings.”

Allan Chivens, an official of West Hollywood West, a group representing residents of the western edge of the city, termed the concessions “significant.”

“They couldn’t ram this through without meeting the neighborhood’s concerns,” he said.

In approving the expansion plans, the City Council also made several concessions to the neighborhood groups, agreeing to exact fees from the center to be used to correct parking and traffic problems and to support permit parking in the area if the residents back the concept.

Child-Care Center

The decision to exact a parking and traffic fee came at the expense of previous plans to force the center to open a child-care center in the building or pay the city 10 cents per square foot of project area--about $87,500--to help the city build a day-care facility in another location.

Instead, those funds will most likely be used to finance a parking and transit authority, Feldman said. Heilman and Councilwoman Helen Albert objected to the deletion of the child-care center, but it was finally approved by a 4-1 vote with only Albert voting against the deletion.

“It’s not a matter of not wanting child care,” said Councilman Alan Viterbi. “It’s that we have a strong commitment to solving our parking problems. Unfortunately, we have a limited (financial) pie.”