A Community in Transition : North Hollywood: Public interest in proposals for the revitalization of the area has waned. Decisions still must be made on how to spend millions available for urban renewal projects.

By STEPHANIE CHAVEZ and AARON CURTISS

April 8, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Community involvement in the multimillion-dollar North Hollywood Redevelopment plan has plunged to the lowest level in the project’s history--at a time when critical decisions over the area’s revitalization are about to be made.

The Community Redevelopment Agency will soon mount a campaign to seek public opinion as it begins a long process that would empower the agency to spend tens of millions of tax dollars to continue urban renewal in North Hollywood.

The agency will soon reach the $89-million cap imposed when the project was created in 1979 and no new development can be funded until an amendment is approved by CRA officials said.

At stake is the direction of redevelopment in North Hollywood. Will public money be used to stimulate further development of an upscale business and office district or to rehabilitate houses and encourage home ownership? Or, will the North Hollywood of the future be a combination of the two, a commercial center that doubles as a bustling community for those who live there?

The next year will tell. Local redevelopment officials are beginning to prepare studies and schedule public hearings on the future of the 740-acre redevelopment zone, once a prosperous San Fernando Valley commercial center that deteriorated in the 1960s with the advent of shopping malls.

More than $44 million has already been spent to buy old commercial buildings clustered around Magnolia and Lankershim boulevards, clearing the way for two towering office buildings and transformation of decaying houses into a street flanked by stucco apartment buildings. New curbs and sidewalks line residential neighborhoods.

The balance of the funds has been earmarked to pay interest on bonds and buy land for another office complex at Magnolia and Lankershim and a shopping center less than a mile away.

The impending call for public comment comes at a time when few in the community are talking to the officials who are directing the North Hollywood redevelopment plans. When initial plans for redevelopment were being drafted, more than 200 people would attend monthly community meetings, concerned about the impact of redevelopment in their neighborhood.

In recent years, though, only a handful of residents and business owners have attended monthly community meetings. Currently, nine seats on a citizens advisory board are vacant, and 16 positions are filled mainly with repeat members.

But while a spectrum of community voices are absent from most public meetings, on the street and in the neighborhoods, disparate views--from enthusiastic to frustrated--abound over the effects of the changing face of North Hollywood.

Redevelopment officials and members of the citizens advisory board, called the Project Area Committee, or PAC, say the lack of public participation is a reflection of agreement and satisfaction with the direction of North Hollywood redevelopment.

“We have a wonderful homogeneous group in both community attendance and on the PAC itself,” said Ada Klevans, chairwoman of the citizens panel, and a tenant of a senior citizen housing complex built with redevelopment funds. “Our projects are progressing beautifully.”

PAC members volunteer their time to attend monthly advisory meetings with CRA staff. They say their input over the last years has influenced nuts and bolts improvements such as landscaping and the look of apartment buildings, and has helped to preserve several small businesses in the area.

But some North Hollywood merchants, residents and former PAC members say that many in the community feel overwhelmed by a complex redevelopment process that was set in motion a decade ago. They perceive the CRA officials and community advisers--a panel comprised primarily of business owners--to be a tightly knit, entrenched group of longtime members who are intent on carrying out the early development plan.

“I feel like they are the big boys and we are the least men on the totem pole,” said Norman Zalben, 35, president of Western Surplus, a business started by his father 30 years ago. His property at Magnolia and Lankershim boulevards has been condemned to make room for street widening and an office tower. “I have tried to keep in touch with redevelopment, but the plans seemed etched in stone. So what’s the point of voicing opinions?”

Others have surfaced to criticize the plan. Members were put on the defensive when ousted members of Hollywood’s redevelopment advisory committee attended a North Hollywood meeting and accused the North Hollywood PAC of conducting unfair elections last month.

The elections to fill nine vacant seats were called off when two members left in anger and a quorum was lost. In a heated exchange over election procedures, the meeting later degenerated into a pushing and shoving match between several in attendance.

The next PAC meeting will be in early May. No decision has been made as to whether another election will be held.

Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area, said he is generally pleased with the progress of North Hollywood renewal and the work of the PAC members although he said “it is disappointing that there is not more interest.”

“If people have gripes they must let me know. It’s not our intention for this to run roughshod over people when we are looking to improve an area,” he said.

Robert Tague, chief of operation for the CRA, said that his staff “wants to come up with a long- range plan with the community. We are recommending that redevelopment proceed because we are looking at an unfinished job. We will identify work programs that could be done and will look to the community and the City Council for public policy discussions.”

The emphasis on public input comes as the CRA is under intense scrutiny by the Los Angeles City Council over a mammoth $5-billion spending proposal and policy decisions over the redevelopment of the downtown central business district. Advocates for the poor charge that the CRA has ignored social needs in favor of subsidizing high-rise developers.

In North Hollywood, however, most of the criticism has been leveled at what most call sluggish renewal in an area that has been blighted for more than a decade. Only in the past year have a number of obvious signs of redevelopment emerged:

* In about three months, the long-awaited office, hotel and commercial project known as The Academy will open at the corner of Lankershim and Magnolia. The $41-million business center is widely viewed as the linchpin that will set the pace for future commercial development in the commercial core of the redevelopment zone. The project also includes 258 apartments.

* More than 1,400 apartment units--including 865 units of CRA-financed units--have been built or are under construction in the zone, flanking residential streets with tall stucco complexes.

* The widening of busy Magnolia Boulevard from Tujunga Avenue to Lankershim Boulevard, long a potholed and bumpy two-lane thoroughfare, is nearing completion.

Previously approved plans not yet under construction include a supermarket-anchored shopping center on the southeast corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Vineland Avenue, an office building on the northwest corner of Lankershim and Magnolia and a 75-unit apartment complex at Harmony Avenue and Magnolia.

As part of the amendment process to seek more spending power, the CRA is also seeking to extend for 12 more years its authority to condemn private property so land can be cleared for new development. The amendment will ultimately require Los Angeles City Council and mayoral approval.

As CRA-financed projects take shape and longtime business owners such as Zalben are forced out to make way for apartment buildings and office complexes, a picture emerges of a community in transition.

Standing inside her recently opened upscale dress shop on Lankershim Boulevard, an enthusiastic Sandra Guttman looks toward an office and commercial complex under construction across the street and proclaims that Lankershim “is going to be another Melrose,” referring to the trendy Los Angeles commercial strip. “Redevelopment is cleaning up this area.”

She reflects the optimism and excitement of those who have pegged their future on a vision of North Hollywood transformed into a bustling office and commercial district where daytime workers and weekend shoppers will spend money at boutiques and restaurants. A new commercial center, where developments such as the Academy project--so named because it will be the headquarters of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences--will attract free-spending tourists eager to visit a television hall of fame and snap photos in front of a 40-foot-tall statue of an Emmy.

Across the street, however, they see redevelopment from a different perspective.

Christine Borel, the longtime owner of Valley Book City, a musty-smelling store crammed with used books, nodded toward the Academy building and lamented that “redevelopment is for the tourists and the very rich, not for the people who live here.”

Borel and others who have survived the hard times in North Hollywood expressed a feeling of betrayal by a community plan that they believe is more focused on attracting office towers and boutiques than rehabilitating “mom and pop” establishments.

Zalben agrees.

“We have been serving North Hollywood for 30 years, supplying goods that the community needed. We catered to the blue collar guy, selling shirts, work clothes, footwear,” said Zalben, who has not yet found a location in North Hollywood to move his business. “Tell me,” he asked, “how is the community better served by the removal of a successful business?”

A mile away, Jeff Welburn was tearing out old kitchen cabinets to remodel his home with the help of a $22,000 low-interest redevelopment loan. Welburn found out about the availability of the loan in a casual conversation with a real estate agent.

“The people who started redevelopment should be out here trying to go that extra yard so people know there is a helping hand to fix houses up.” Welburn said. “A lot of houses out here really need help. If I don’t see more interest in this neighborhood I won’t stay here for long.”

Indeed, the issue of preserving the housing stock in single-family neighborhoods and promoting home ownership is an issue that many, including current and former PAC members, say has been neglected.

Although zoning approved in 1983 allows for large swaths of high- and medium-density housing in the southern and middle sections of the zone, some are concerned that rampant construction of apartments--rather than townhouses or condominiums--is creating a high ratio of tenants to homeowners.

Statistics provided by The Times’ marketing research department show that in 1989, about 75% of the population inside the redevelopment zone were renters, compared to 60% of the general population in North Hollywood.

“Nothing but rental units are being built. That doesn’t make for a balanced community,” said Kurt Hunter, president of the North Hollywood Residents Assn., who served on the PAC for the past two years. “I’m convinced that we need to build a mix of housing and adopt a policy that promotes ownership especially for first-time buyers.”

Since the beginning of the program, more than $4.1 million in public funds has been spent for low-interest loans that have rehabilitated 898 housing units, including apartments, according to CRA statistics. An additional $8.8 million in public money has helped to build 865 apartment units, 335 of which were set aside for low-income renters.

About $29 million has been spent to buy and clear land for commercial projects, mainly for the Academy and the Hewlett-Packard headquarters built at the same intersection in 1985.

In December, the PAC called on CRA to develop a program to build subsidized, owner-occupied housing, a idea that Tague said is “on the shelf because home-ownership programs cost money and our financial resources don’t allow for it now.”

There appears to be widespread support among homeowners and business leaders for an amendment that will allow for increased tax revenue spending in North Hollywood. PAC members are hopeful that the amendment process will prompt more people in the community to voice their opinions.

“We would like a fuller complement of representatives, but I don’t know where they are and why they don’t come forward,” said Don Eitner, a PAC member and executive director of the North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “We welcome them.”

BACKGROUND

The Community Redevelopment Agency helps finance commercial development, housing and public works projects largely with property tax revenue generated from new construction inside a redevelopment zone. The agency uses its power to condemn properties to purchase land in blighted areas at comparatively low prices and sells it cheaply to developers.

As new buildings are constructed, property taxes increase, boosting the amount of money at the disposal of the CRA for new redevelopment projects. The revenue is called tax increment. Under state law, a cap on tax increment spending must be established when a redevelopment zone is created. The $89-million North Hollywood spending cap was approved by the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley.

DEVELOPMENT IN NORTH HOLLYWOOD

1. Elmer Gardens 20 Units

2. Denny Place 17 units

3. Hotel* 200 rooms

4. The Academy* 8 stories, commercial

5. Core housing* 50 units very low income; 248 total units

6. Magnolia Towers 200 units

7. Harmony Village 28 units

8. Harmony Manor 15 units

9. Magnolia Villas, South* 65 units

10. Harmony Gate* 75 units

11. Denny Manor 15 units