Fox Expected to Begin Bid for Expansion
Fox Inc. is expected to plunge into the complicated Los Angeles development process today by filing a document with the city that will officially launch the effort for a major expansion of 20th Century Fox Studio in Century City.
Fox’s announcement in March that it wanted to stay and expand its Pico Boulevard facility was a switch from earlier plans to develop the property as luxury condominiums, razing the historic studio and relocating.
Since then, studio representatives have been meeting and soliciting support from surrounding homeowner groups. Its initial reception has been mixed, in part because of a lack of specific data on the impact and in part because of strong slow-growth sentiment on the Westside.
Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said this week he would not support the change in plans until he is convinced that its impact--particularly on traffic--would not exceed the agreed-upon proposal to build about 2,000 condominiums on the site.
Obtaining city approval for the revised project will be a complicated process, because the condo option was part of a broader city-approved land-use plan for the Century City area that was reached only after extensive negotiations with neighborhood groups and businesses there.
This means that, in addition to the normal environmental reviews, Fox will also have to obtain a zoning change and amendments to the city’s land-use plans. Each step of the process is subject to challenges from neighborhood groups and other individuals or businesses.
Preliminary plans call for adding 771,000 square feet of office, studio and production space and moving Fox’s KTTV television station operations to the Century City site from Hollywood. In addition, existing production facilities will undergo a major renovation.
Although Fox executive David Handelman said this week that most of the neighbors “want Fox to pursue its renovation and expansion plans,” not all groups are on board. Two key homeowners groups indicated that they will press the city to stick with the original agreement.
“The vocal majority will be heard and that’s not on the sound stage of Fox but on the streets of the community and at City Hall,” said Laura Lake, president of Friends of Westwood and vice president of the Westwood Homeowners Assn.
Rerouting of Bike Path
The California Coastal Commission has approved a rerouting of the beach bike path along a 970-foot stretch of the Promenade in Santa Monica, but it may be next spring before the project is done.
City officials and the owner of the soon-to-open Park Hyatt Hotel at the foot of Pico Boulevard want to move the path because it is regarded as hazardous.
