Warner Center Size May Nearly Be Doubled : Growth: A 20-year plan would allow commercial space to increase to 26 million square feet. Two major streets would be elevated.

Commercial development at Warner Center in Woodland Hills could be nearly doubled if $1.3 billion is spent on traffic improvements that would include six-lane elevated streets, city planners said Tuesday.

The recommendations may set up a clash with Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the Warner Center area and has misgivings about further large-scale development there.

In a blueprint for Warner Center’s next 20 years made public this week, the Los Angeles Planning Department backed construction of 11.8 million square feet of additional commercial-retail space, on the condition that steps are taken to handle the added traffic.

In May, Picus unveiled an interim growth-control measure for Warner Center that she said was designed to send a message to developers that the amount of development permitted by the final Warner Center Specific Plan--which must be approved by the council--”may be substantially below what has been looked at before.”

Since 1987, two Picus-appointed citizen planning panels have recommended that a maximum of about 26 million square feet of commercial development be allowed in Warner Center, an increase of 12 million square feet. The specific plan released by the Planning Department this week also proposes that level of development.

Warner Center currently has 14 million square feet of commercial space, spread over 1,100 acres. It already surpasses the 10 million to 12 million square feet in the 290-acre Century City area, city officials said.

Picus refused to disclose Tuesday what position she will take on the Planning Department proposal, but she acknowledged that she has a “lot of concerns” about it.

She is expected to outline her proposed changes to the plan when she meets tonight with the group of citizens she named to advise the professional planners in drafting the specific plan.

The influential Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization is expected to urge Picus to oppose further large-scale growth. Gordon Murley, vice president of the group, called the proposal inadequate Tuesday.

The Planning Department version of the specific plan envisions huge new development in Warner Center, once the site of movie mogul Jack Warner’s ranch and now home to two first-class hotels, a hospital, business parks, office towers and two major shopping malls, the Promenade and Topanga Plaza.

But the plan also proposes that developers pay $14,990 for each estimated new car trip their projects would generate per day. All told, the plan foresees the developers paying $556 million toward the $1.3 billion in roadway improvements needed to support the growth.

One of the key premises of the plan was to build in enough street and transit improvements to prevent--even with the growth--any worsening of existing traffic congestion in the area, said Jim Dawson, Picus’ planning aide.

As a result, the plan specifies a long list of street widenings and the computerization of traffic signals.

But the big-ticket items include elevating Victory and Topanga Canyon boulevards, the major Warner Center thoroughfares. Traffic would pass through on these elevated streets, unhindered by local traffic on the ground-level streets, Dawson said.

“The high-flow arterial concept may ultimately be implemented along Topanga Canyon Boulevard north to the Simi Valley Freeway,” the plan says. Victory Boulevard might also be turned into a kind of mini-highway, stretching across the entire San Fernando Valley, according to the plan.

The document also calls for new Ventura Freeway interchanges at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Canoga Avenue and Fallbrook Avenue to ease traffic.

The plan calls for Owensmouth Avenue to be transformed into a pedestrian-friendly street lined with trees, restaurants and small shops.

Under the plan, the city would also reserve the right, after 6 million additional square feet of development is built, to review the success of the traffic-mitigation measures and call a halt to future growth if the measures do not work as expected, Dawson said.

Assistant Director of Planning Robert Sutton said the midway growth checkpoint is needed because it is impossible to predict what will be happening years from now when the projects are being built. “We need the safeguard of being able to give it a second look,” Sutton said.

NEXT STEP

Los Angeles Councilwoman Joy Picus will unveil her views of the Warner Center Specific Plan proposed by the Planning Department at a 7 p.m. meeting today with her Citizens Advisory Committee. On Aug. 24, the department will hold a workshop on the plan and, on Aug. 28, a formal public hearing. Also, the draft environmental impact report on the plan will be circulated for public inspection during the coming weeks. After hearing all comments, the Planning Department will produce its final plan and present it to the city Planning Commission.