Ventura Alley Is Buffer Zone to Some, Building Blocks to Others

The newest battle line between developers and homeowners in the San Fernando Valley is 8 miles long and 20 feet wide.

It is the alley that runs parallel to parts of Ventura Boulevard between Studio City and Woodland Hills.

Developers view it as an anachronism that stands in the way of good planning and efficient use of a dwindling land inventory along the Valley’s busiest and most expensive commercial corridor.

Homeowners claim it as their last defense against urbanization, which is gobbling up tree-shaded neighborhoods and leaving a trail of concrete pavement, glass-sided high-rises and gridlocked traffic.

Whichever it is, the alley is an unlikely battlefield.

Uneven Progression

It stops and starts dozens of times between the foothills of Studio City and those of Woodland Hills. It meanders, uninterrupted, for a mile behind storefronts in some places. In others, it is a stubby, one-block strip.

The alley has evolved at one point into a street that boasts its own name and its own set of numbered addresses. Elsewhere, it is full of potholes and seemingly forgotten by all but occasional deliverymen and trash collectors.

In Encino, it has milelong gaps. The missing links were either never built or were abandoned to developers who convinced Los Angeles city officials that a public alley was no longer needed.

Mostly, though, the alley is a mirror of Ventura Boulevard itself.

Alley Traffic Jams

In Studio City, there are occasional alley traffic jams as Mercedeses and BMWs jockey with delivery vans for parking places behind boutiques and antique shops.

In Tarzana, station wagons are more common than trucks behind a row of children’s clothing stores and beauty shops. The rear doors to the businesses, some of which have been operated by the same merchants for decades, are often busier than their front doors.

In Woodland Hills, the alley is clean, new-looking and deserted. The few cars that pass through use it as a shortcut to free parking lots next to recently built office buildings.

But, in every section, homeowners who live next to the alley share one feeling: they love it.

“It’s the only buffer we have left,” said Woodland Hills resident Stephen Taylor, who has lived on Leonora Drive next to the alley for 32 years.

“It keeps the area quiet. I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” said Theresa Cousineau, who has lived on Encino’s Santa Rita Street behind the alley since 1952. “It keeps us from being back against the stores.”

Studio City resident Eileen Kenyon said she has lived on Dickens Street next to the alley for 30 years. “It keeps some of the carcinogenic pollution from our lungs. It helps alleviate traffic around here. It’s a buffer zone,” she said.

The stretch behind Kenyon’s house is the site of the Valley’s latest alley fight.

A developer has proposed ripping up the alley, which ran behind the former Tail O’ the Cock restaurant. On that location, he wants to build a three-story, 70,000-square-foot commercial building. Homeowners are bitterly opposed.

“You’ll have people staring from that building down into homes,” neighbor Larry Steven Londre said. “Without that alley, traffic would be much worse down the block at the intersection of Coldwater and Ventura.”

Developer Herbert M. Piken said his proposed $18-million project will have private loading docks and driveways and plenty of parking for tenants and shoppers.

“An alley is created to serve primarily the owners of the property it runs through,” Piken said.

He continued: “That alley never did serve anything except the owners of the property. Only five people a day drive through it. The Hughes market down the street had a continuation of the alley that was vacated without any problems when Hughes went in.”

Builders say they commonly seek to consolidate small retail lots in order to construct large shopping centers or office projects.

Planning expert Pauline Almond, a private consultant who has been hired by developers of several large Ventura Boulevard projects, says it is also common for the city to abandon sections of the alley when small storefronts are replaced by large complexes. Planners refer to alley closures as “vacations.”

‘Normal and Routine’

“If the original reason for the alley was to serve individual lots, the new single owner will request a vacation. It’s normal and routine,” Almond said.

Alley abandonment is not automatic, however, according to Russ Larson, assistant head of the city’s Street Opening and Widening Division.

Larson’s staff reviews developers’ alley requests and makes recommendations on the applications to City Council, which approves or rejects the closures. He said no statistics are kept on their number.

“Each development is considered on its face. If there’s justification and the vacation would not create more traffic onto Ventura, it might be done,” Larson said.

“In certain parts of the city, alleys are probably more of a minus than a plus. I’d think that, certainly, where you still have the smaller stores, the historic development, the alleys would be a plus.”

City Council members also view alleys as buffers between homes and businesses, he said. “I’ve heard councilmen say the same thing. I know it goes into their thinking.”

It certainly goes into Encino-area Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s thinking, said Ginny Kruger, Yaroslavsky’s chief planning deputy.

Kruger’s office has received so many alley-abandonment requests from the Westwood area that it has established guidelines for dealing with them, she said.

That rule generally prohibits developers from counting alley space as part of the lot’s basic square footage, which the city uses to calculate the maximum size of commercial construction, she said. Otherwise, an alley across a 200-foot-wide lot could translate to a 6,000-square-foot building bonus for a developer, Kruger said.

Requests for alley closures are a new issue to Councilman Michael Woo, who began representing the Studio City area last year, aide Gilda Haas said.

Woo “will not support vacations of alleys that are detrimental to communities,” said Eric Roth, Woo’s planning deputy for the Valley. “If an alley is a buffer or important for traffic mitigation, he obviously won’t be in support.”

Close Review Requested

Roth said he has “red-flagged” the Tail O’ The Cock alley and asked the Street Opening and Widening Division to closely review builder Piken’s plans to determine if a full environmental report is needed.

Such scrutiny has not always occurred with Ventura Boulevard developments, city officials acknowledge.

The most glaring recent example of alley encroachment is in Tarzana, where a commercial complex at 18607 Ventura Blvd. slices an alley in half at mid-block.

The complex consists of offices, shops and a paid parking lot. It was built about two years ago on the site of a 50-year-old motel that had cottages predating the Tarzana commercial strip.

When boulevard storefronts were built in the 1950s, the alley put in behind them dead-ended at the motel buildings. Shopkeepers were promised at the time that the alley would be extended when the motel property was redeveloped.

The city goofed by not requiring that the alley be completed by developers of the new complex, called Plaza de Tarzana, said Brad Rosenheim, Valley-area deputy to Councilman Marvin Braude.

“It was really an oversight on the part of our office and city planning, engineering, possibly, and everybody involved,” Rosenheim said. “Our general philosophy is to have developers improve and maintain alleys whenever we can.”

Michael Vosganian, who has operated a mid-block floor-covering shop 16 1/2 years, said the roadblock causes headaches for customers. He said neighboring merchants were disappointed that the alley wasn’t finished.

“There are lots of problems. People get lost when they can’t get through the alley, and there have been accidents from people trying to turn around,” Vosganian said. “Delivery trucks have had to back all the way out when they couldn’t turn.”

Barber Leo Kleinert, whose neighboring shop is 22 years old, said a second new commercial complex on the block has put even more traffic pressure on the dead-end alley.

Parking Problems

He said that project has a paid parking lot that is entered from the alley and is the scene of traffic jams from cars pulling into it--or from parking in the alley to avoid the parking fee. “The city should have taken the alley into consideration,” Kleinert said.

Illegal alley parking is a particular problem in the Sherman Oaks area, said John Stone, who drives a 25-foot-long milk truck and makes about 30 stops a day behind stores.

“Alleys can be a pain in the butt. People around here use them like they would a street,” Stone said. “I waste a lot of time backing up to get around parked cars in alleys. Time is money for me.”

In Tarzana, United Parcel Service driver Kelly Duhs said the alley is worth occasional aggravation. “Without it, I’d have to double-park out on Ventura and get tickets,” she said.

A few miles east, in Encino, delivery vans are frequently parked two abreast on the boulevard while drivers unload everything from bottled water to documents in front of high-rise office buildings that lack alleys.

“It’s a serious lack of planning,” said Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino residents group. “It’s to the point where we now have alley services being performed on the boulevard.”

Silver said homeowners will aggressively attempt to save the alleys that are left in his community by pressing for new city ordinances.

“If developers keep thinking about taking them, we’re going to force deliveries and other building services to be handled at night and on weekends,” he said.

Where no alley exists, homeowners will lobby for the city to require special loading-zone setbacks for commercial projects, Silver said.

“Developers can either operate in a responsible manner or in a gluttonous manner,” he said.