Farmers Market Traffic Woes Seen : Development: A proposed shopping center would have a ‘significant’ impact on congestion in the Beverly-Fairfax District, a report says.

A proposed 2-million-square-foot shopping center at the Farmers Market would have “significant, unmitigatable” impacts on traffic in the Beverly-Fairfax District, according to an environmental impact report released this week.

But the document also holds out the hope of a regional solution, saying that a coming study by Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood may find ways to improve traffic flows area-wide.

The conclusions of the environmental report were similar to those of a preliminary draft released more than a year ago, but this time the calculations included traffic expected from a rival development proposed by owners of the nearby Park Labrea apartment complex.

The report also found that the danger of explosion from methane deposits would be mitigated by the venting systems required for any development to be built at the site, which is across the street from a store where 24 people were injured in a methane blast and fire in 1985.

Abandoned wells from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies the development site, would also have to be identified, dug up and decommissioned according to modern standards, the document said. This would “reduce these impacts to insignificant levels,” it said.

Now that the report has been issued, Los Angeles officials can start working on the developer’s requests for the city actions that are necessary before construction can begin on the project at the corner of 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue.

These include preparation and approval of a new tract map, conditional-use permits and other decisions that may be appealed to the City Council.

As envisioned, the Farmers Market development would add up to just over a million square feet of retail space, including movies, restaurants, a health club, three department stores and several dozen smaller shops.

The open-air market, which dates back to 1934, when 18 farmers from the San Fernando Valley started selling their produce directly to city residents, would remain virtually unchanged.

But the project would also feature a 475,000-square-foot hotel, 222,000 square feet of office space, 150 apartment units and five parking structures on the 30-acre site, one of the largest patches of underdeveloped land on the Westside.

A first hearing on the environmental report is expected to take place in about a month, by which time the developers--A. F. Gilmore Co., owner of the property since the late 1800s, and its partner, Chicago-based JMB Urban Investment and Development--may come up with changes intended to win public support for the project.

Under development since 1983, the project has come in for criticism from community groups, elected officials and an urban design task force appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley, largely because of its size and the traffic it would generate.

“The (environmental report) covers a lot of areas from worst case to other scenarios, and now the process will start to evaluate them,” said Ira Handelman, community consultant for the developers. “We’re ready and willing to work within the process to come up with a project that can work.”

Although opponents have called for a smaller shopping center at the site, the report warned that a drastically scaled-down center might not be profitable.

Reductions of 50% or even 25% would not leave enough room for the major department stores needed to attract shoppers to a regional shopping center, according to an economic feasibility study that was included in the report.

City planning officials, who oversaw the production of the document, noted that they could not vouch for the market data included in the economic study.

But they approved the conclusion that increased traffic was the major environmental impact presented by the proposed expansion of the Farmers Market.

Even with the building of all possible improvements--paid for by the developer--traffic at seven of 17 nearby intersections would be at maximum capacity or worse during afternoon rush hours because of the 3,495 additional rush-hour trips generated by the project, they concluded.

Improvements suggested in the report include the opening of Stanley Avenue as a public street to ease north-south traffic through the project area. The extension of Stanley is currently closed to cars between Beverly Boulevard and 3rd Street.

Other changes are also possible, but “to mitigate unavoidable impacts . . . additional right of way outside of the applicant’s control would have to be acquired,” the report said.

These purchases could allow for extra traffic lanes and turn pockets to be built on existing streets.

They could take place once a study sponsored by Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood comes up with ways to reduce traffic congestion in the three-city area, the report said.

Owners of new developments would then be charged to finance the improvements.

TROUBLED INTERSECTIONS

An environmental impact report found that a proposed shopping center at the Farmers Market would have a significant effect on traffic in the Beverly-Fairfax area. The study found seven intersections that would be especially hard hit.