More Study on Revitalization Plan Ordered

Skeptical of whether a plan to revitalize downtown Granada Hills would work, the Los Angeles Planning Commission sent the proposal back to city planners Thursday for more study.

The plan calls for Spanish colonial-style architecture and numerous other landscaping and building-design standards for new development on portions of Chatsworth Street, Balboa Boulevard and four other commercial areas in Granada Hills.

But planning commissioners questioned whether the cost of meeting those standards will cause developers to shy away from investing in the Granada Hills business district, which is one of several in the San Fernando Valley that has lost shoppers to enclosed malls in the past 20 years.

The business district “is in need of economic revitalization,” commission Vice President Theodore Stein Jr. said. “But there are so many hoops to jump through on this, I just don’t think it’s realistic.”

‘Not Santa Barbara’

Commissioner Fernando Torres-Gil said: “It became clear to me that this is not going to work. That part of the Valley is not Santa Barbara. It’s not Palm Springs.”

The plan design and landscaping standards are part of an attempt to make the business district a pedestrian-oriented shopping promenade. Similar plans have been proposed for other aging commercial strips in the Valley, such as Devonshire Street in Chatsworth, Sherman Way in Reseda and Van Nuys Boulevard in Van Nuys.

Like the others, the Granada Hills plan would ban establishment of a variety of new businesses, such as thrift stores, pawnshops and those relating to automobiles.

The effect of the plan might not be seen for as many as 20 years, city planner Gordon Hamilton cautioned.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” said John Ciccarelli, a past president of the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce and chairman of a citizens committee that helped formulate the plan.

No Investigation

But the Planning Commission elicited an admission from Hamilton that city planners had not investigated whether the costs of the plan’s building standards for new commercial and multifamily residential developments might discourage even long-term investment.

Hamilton conceded that the Planning Department had not estimated the costs of many of the plan’s standards, such as one that requires that the second floors of new apartment buildings be set back 10 feet from the first floors.

In fact, the plan heard by the commission Thursday was less ambitious than it was when first proposed earlier this year. The earlier proposal called for parking lots adjacent to single-family homes on the fringe of the business district, but planners eliminated that provision after residents protested at a public hearing in March.

The Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the Granada Hills plan again in November.