Universal’s ‘Urbanopolis’ : Development: MCA’s ‘Entertainment City’ will integrate the present tours, cinemas and amphitheater with places to work and live.

Gold mines come in many forms, both literal and metaphoric. Sometimes they are simply holes in the ground from which the shining ore may be dug: This takes sweat. Or they may come in the form of a vast, unnoticed potential: This takes imagination.

The proposed $3-billion development of Universal City by MCA Development Co. needed imagination to reveal its golden opportunities.

It took vision to see that these 420 prime acres located near the interchange of the Hollywood and Ventura freeways could be more than just another massive and characterless commercial development.

With imagination, MCA Development is planning an “Entertainment City” that will turn Universal City’s present tours, cinemas and amphitheater into an integrated urban environment where thousands may work, live and play.

“We see this opportunity to build the real physical embodiment of the entertainment capital of the world, with public spaces that delight, architecture that inspires and functionality that supports an incredible variety of human activities and experiences (to create) a prototype city of the Information Age,” declares an MCA document titled “Vision for a City Center.”

Entertainment City will not happen overnight. After the initial groundbreaking, scheduled for this fall, MCA estimates that the development will be built out over 25 years on the Universal City site, which is bounded in the south by the Hollywood Freeway, the north by the Los Angeles River, the west by Lankershim Boulevard and the east by Barham Boulevard.

The Los Angeles city boundary slices through the lower third of the Universal City property; the other two-thirds is on unincorporated county land.

The Entertainment City concept is basically simple, both as a commercial venture and as a visionary urban design.

Commercially, the concept builds upon the solid fact that around 8 million people annually visit the Universal Studios Tour, the Cineplex and the Amphitheatre or stay in Universal City’s two hotels, the Registry and the Universal Sheraton.

As an urban design vision, the Entertainment City planning team, which includes the Jerde Partnership and DMJM Engineering, proposes a low-rise complex of buildings that follows the contours of the Universal City hill.

This development is focused upon a curved pedestrian retail and entertainment spine, dubbed “City Walk,” that links the tours, cinemas and amphitheater in one varied but integrated urban experience.

Seen from the air, Entertainment City will resemble an inverted saucer laid over the hilltop. The edges of the saucer will be filled with three-story office buildings served by a ring road and underground garages.

Between the office buildings will be pedestrian side streets lined with cafes and shops linked to an inner circle of retail and fashion facilities that in turn flows into the City Walk.

An expanded hotel district on the west and a smaller-scale “village center” on the east flesh out the urban design. Residential complexes to house the people who work in the offices will come later, around the edges of the site that adjoin existing neighborhoods.

“City Walk is the heart of the whole idea,” architect Jon Jerde explained. “It’s the ultimate Los Angeles boulevard, the armature to which all the variety connects, a city street that expresses entertainment.”

For Jerde, Entertainment City is an evolution of what he calls “Urbanopolis”--a concept that the conventional regional shopping center can become the core of a lively and varied communal environment that includes a wide range of cultural and commercial activity.

From Horton Plaza, his innovative and highly successful 1986 mega project in San Diego, Jerde has gone on to design a range of Urbanopolises across the United States and abroad.

About as long as Rodeo Drive from Wilshire to Santa Monica boulevards, City Walk will be festooned with electronic billboards, a “Musicplex” where visitors may enjoy a “total rock experience,” restaurants, cafes and cinemas.

“Above all, it will be a place where people can enjoy the passing urban parade in safety,” says James Nelson, MCA director of real estate planning.

UCLA Extension has agreed to lease the upper floors of a long section of City Walk for a program of evening classes. This nighttime use, along with the cinemas and music venues, will extend the hours that City Walk is active.

The creation of the $100-million City Walk will begin after Labor Day. Phase 2, scheduled for 1992, will include a third hotel and some of the outer ring offices.

The pace of the development over the following two decades will depend on the market demand for office and retail space in the project.

Another remarkable aspect of the Entertainment City development is that it will be fully funded from MCA’s own revenues. This allows the company full control over every aspect of the planning and build-out of the project.

This total control inspired MCA President Sidney Sheinberg to move in a radical direction.

Dissatisfied with several earlier master plans MCA commissioned that were based on conventional Century City-type layouts featuring isolated high-rise office towers, Sheinberg suggested that Universal should build upon its unique attraction as an entertainment and film-making center.

He also saw the potential of Universal City’s prime location in the Valley, yet close to Hollywood and downtown, linked by freeways and the projected Metro Rail line.

“Sheinberg also grasped the historical significance of Universal City, which began as a chicken farm where Carl Laemmle began making movies in 1915,” Nelson said. “In L.A. terms, 75 years is ancient history, and the association with the birth of Hollywood has a powerful resonance.”

In 1986, MCA formulated its Entertainment City vision under the direction of MCA Development Co. President Lawrence Spungin, and set about a scrupulous program of consultation with its surrounding neighborhoods.

In the following years, MCA sponsored a series of participatory workshops and surveys to find out what local residents want and to make them feel part of the process.

“MCA has done a great job in consulting the community,” said Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn. “They came to us for input and responded to our concerns. We feel they desire, as we do, a quality development.”

Even Hillside Federation Chairman Brian Moore, a noted and articulate community watchdog, declared he was “not unhappy” with MCA’s plans.

“I like the low profile of the scheme in the way it caps the hill, and I feel that MCA has taken trouble to mitigate the traffic impact on the surrounding highways. MCA’s management has demonstrated an enlightened approach to neighborhood participation.”

Most of the extra traffic that will be generated by the MCA development will flow through the Hollywood Freeway ramp Universal financed, and onto the existing exit on Lankershim Boulevard, away from the residential districts along Barham Boulevard.

When (and if) the Metro Rail extension is constructed in the Valley, the station planned on Lankershim will also serve to lighten the automobile traffic flow.

City officials also seem favorably impressed by MCA’s plans. Jane Blumenfeld, the mayor’s planning deputy, called the Entertainment City concept “pretty exciting.”

She said it was “a model of sophisticated planning founded upon the vital idea of integrating offices, shops, entertainment and housing to create a vital urban mix.”

Alan Kreditor, dean of the USC School of Urban and Regional Planning and a member of the three-person advisory committee convened by MCA to oversee the project’s development, said that Entertainment City is “sweeping, ambitious and innovative, but built upon old traditions and new sensibilities.

“It says some very good things about us as a place and a culture. The combination is the essence of Los Angeles and its message to the world.”