Plan Also a Little-Known Human Side

When it comes to Warner Center, urban planners, politicians and homeowners have fixated on the area’s ability to absorb more steel-framed skyscrapers and malls.

But the recently proposed Warner Center Specific Plan also has a little-known human side to it, including provisions to provide for affordable housing around the urban hub and to require child-care facilities for Warner Center’s work force.

Under the Planning Department’s 20-year blueprint for Warner Center, 12.3 million square feet of additional commercial-retail space could be built, nearly double the existing 14.5 million square feet.

But one of the public benefits developers would have to provide to exercise their new building privileges would be to help pay for construction of housing either within the 1,100-acre plan area or in adjacent areas, said Robert Sutton, deputy director of planning for Los Angeles.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the area, said, however, that she was surprised by the housing element of the proposed plan.

“I have a certain discomfort with it,” Picus said. The Citizens Advisory Committee that she named to help develop the plan “never talked about a housing element,” she said. “The Planning Department just plopped it in.”

But Picus refused to say if she would seek to delete this provision from a plan that already calls for heavy fees on developers to finance $1.3 billion in street and transit improvements that planners say are needed to stabilize Warner Center traffic conditions with increased commercial development.

The proposed plan calls for developers to pay into a housing production fund $3.73 for each square foot of commercial development they build. The plan thus appears to envision setting up a $40-million fund for housing.

But Sutton said Wednesday that the $3.73-per-square-foot levy is likely to be scrapped in a rewrite of the specific plan because it was arrived at incorrectly. Also, the final Planning Department version of the plan will give developers the latitude to build the housing in lieu of paying the fees, he said.

But whatever happens, the specific plan will address affordable housing because various regional planning authorities now demand that the city provide incentives for locating housing near major employment centers to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, Sutton said.

During the 1990 debate over the huge Porter Ranch project, the Southern California Assn. of Governments and the South Coast Air Quality Management District set a precedent by demanding that the project provide a balance of jobs and housing.

“We try to learn from the past,” Sutton said. “We know these agencies will be asking for balance on this plan too.”

The plan will also seek to develop affordable housing to “serve all spectrums of the Warner Center work force,” Sutton said.

Under the plan, a minimum of 30% of the housing built would be “low-income dwelling units” made available first to people who work in the Warner Center area.

Developers would also be required to set aside at least 2,000 square feet and as much as 12,000 square feet for child-care facilities at their projects.

Depending on the project, the plan calls for the child-care facilities to be located either in the specific plan area or within half a mile of its boundaries, and it gives priority to the children of people from low-income households who live in the Warner Center area.