Ventura Boulevard Growth Plan Angers Both Sides : Development: City planners call for stiff builders’ fees along the Valley’s 17-mile ‘Main Street’.

A plan for regulating growth along Ventura Boulevard, released Monday by Los Angeles city planners, drew fire from developers and slow-growth advocates alike as it endorsed ceilings on growth and traffic identical to those proposed last August by a citizens group.

Even with those lids, the amount of commercial space along the boulevard--sometimes called the San Fernando Valley’s Main Street--would be allowed to increase by 44%. The flip side is that, under the plan, developers would be required to pay hefty fees to help relieve the traffic congestion created by their new projects.

“It’s going to bring development to a quick halt,” said Ben Reznik, a land-use attorney who represents several developers with large commercial projects along the 17-mile length of Ventura Boulevard.

But Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. Vice President Fred Kramer said the proposal by the city Planning Department would encourage office construction and eventually destroy the boulevard’s remaining low-rise, neighborhood-serving stores.

“It will force the consumer to drive three to five miles to get gas, to get groceries,” Kramer said.

Reznik and Kramer agreed that the plan would encourage office construction because offices generate fewer automobile trips for each 1,000 square feet of development than do retail stores.

The development of a comprehensive plan for the boulevard has been three years in the making.

A 19-member Citizens Advisory Committee, appointed by the six Los Angeles City Council members whose districts are crossed by the boulevard, issued its growth-control recommendations in August.

The proposal unveiled by the Planning Department Monday leaves key features of those recommendations intact:

* A limit of 8.6 million square feet of additional commercial growth. Currently Ventura Boulevard has about 19 million square feet of commercial space.

* A limit of 30,000 additional automobile trips per day along the boulevard. Transportation analysts estimate that motorists currently make 70,000 trips along the boulevard.

The size of individual new projects would be partly set by the amount of traffic they generate. Office projects, for example, generate far less traffic than retail projects and thus could be larger.

Bob Sutton, a senior city planning official, emphasized Monday in a presentation to about 30 community leaders in Studio City that the recommendations of his department coincide with those of the citizens group on the two key growth limits.

Sutton heatedly denied reports that his staff had delayed release of its proposal in order to give developers additional time to build their projects without the proposed limits.

Still, it may be months before a final plan is adopted. The Planning Department’s document goes next to the city’s five-member Planning Commission for consideration. Finally, the commission will make a recommendation to the Los Angeles City Council.

The commission is set to begin reviewing the department’s proposal at a Feb. 22 public meeting.

At least one city planner said the fact that the plan was being criticized by both sides in the development debate indicated that it was on target. “It seems to have hit the middle ground,” said the planner, who asked for anonymity.

Of particular concern to Reznik, who represents developers, is the Planning Department’s recommendation that the traffic mitigation fees paid by builders be set at anywhere from $3,838 to $7,629 per daily trip, depending on where along the boulevard the project is located.

“These fees are prohibitively high,” Reznik said.

The fees are about twice as high as the citizens group recommended and would generate $170 million if the maximum amount of commercial space were built. Sutton said the increases would pay for street widening needs identified by the city’s engineers since August. To accommodate the additional traffic, engineers now say streets must be widened for 370 feet on either side of major intersections.

But Vivian Roscalvo, a deputy for Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents Sherman Oaks, voiced doubts about how much traffic improvement work would actually be done. Street widening can occur only if adjacent property owners are developing their land. If a property is not the site of a new development, the city cannot widen the streets in front of it.

Roscalvo said the Planning Department proposal would permit six-story buildings in certain areas of Sherman Oaks where the citizens group had advised a three-story limit.

Cindy Miscikowski, chief deputy to Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents Encino, noted that the plan would permit four-story buildings in the heavily developed area between the San Diego Freeway and Balboa Boulevard. The advisory committee had recommended three-story limits there.