Impact Report Backs Plan for Fox Expansion : Development: Although traffic in the area would more than double, engineers say the studio’s mitigation steps should prevent further problems.

The proposed Fox Studio expansion plan would more than double the number of car trips to its already-congested Century City neighborhood without increasing traffic problems significantly, according to an environmental impact report released by the city Thursday.

That seemingly illogical math is made possible through promises by the studio to finance $5 million in traffic mitigation measures and to pay as yet unspecified penalties if traffic does not stay within guidelines set forth in the report.

“No problem,” Fox Vice President David Handelman said succinctly when asked Thursday about the traffic that will be generated by the proposed $200-million, 771,000-square-foot expansion on the studio’s 53 acres at Avenue of the Stars and Pico Boulevard.

Handelman has the glowing environmental impact report to prove it, a clean bill of environmental health that says the project can go forward without significant impact, an unusual finding for such a large undertaking in an already dense area.

The report’s only quarrel, a quibble actually, is that 14 historic buildings will be razed in a plan pledged to historic preservation of 54 buildings on a back lot that is rich with movie lore.

Project opponents caution, however, that all that glitters is not gold and one should be especially suspicious of a report issued on the day after Christmas when people’s attention is elsewhere and is likely to remain elsewhere until after the new year. The public has 45 days to comment on the report.

“All the evil deeds are done over holidays, whether it’s on Christmas or Yom Kippur. It’s ecumenical,” said activist Laura Lake, reciting a history of Westside projects where key documents surfaced when people might be looking the other way. Everyone involved insists that the timing was coincidental and that the report was released when the city was finished with it.

Fox is seeking to renovate and expand facilities on its 60-year-old lot, including a move from Hollywood for Fox television, KTTV-TV. Its bigger, better studio, if approved, would add 332,000 square feet of administrative office space, 147,000 square feet for production offices and 120,000 square feet for the television station in a 1.9-million-square-foot project.

It would also add 7,920 daily car trips to the 7,720 made in the surrounding area today. It would also generate 1,420 jobs.

Fox officials have said that they need a state-of-the-art facility and that they will leave West Los Angeles if their expansion plans aren’t approved.

The studio expansion took the place of a plan to sell the valuable land for high-rise condominiums, a proposal put in writing as part of the Century City South Specific Plan and one still favored by some residents.

Fox says it has major support for staying put, citing Friends of Fox, a support group of more than 3,100 people organized by the studio (with the help of studio tours, free film screenings and T-shirts.)

Proponents of the plan say that it is far better to have a studio, even a greatly expanded one, than high-rise condominiums, which would bring just as much traffic but on seven days a week instead of five. “We know no user of that land is going to use less traffic,” said John Klein, an ad agency owner and chairman of Friends of Fox.

Critics of the plan, many from Cheviot Hills and adjacent neighborhoods to the south, do not believe that traffic can be ameliorated. “No matter how much they talk about mitigation, they are sugarcoating a pill that will choke this neighborhood,” said Leslie Johnson, chairwoman of the Save Motor Avenue committee.

Motor Avenue is a north-south residential street that has long been used by commuters. It ends at the studio’s Pico entrance, though that entrance will be moved under the expansion plan in part to discourage the use of Motor Avenue.

Traffic experts say they can divert 1,465 cars daily with a no-left-turn sign on Irene Street, a tiny cut-through street, although Motor Avenue can be easily reached another way.

Johnson is highly skeptical of the untested hypothesis. “All it will do is have traffic go ‘round the bend,” she said.

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes Century City, supports the project, with reservations about the traffic, despite the clean bill of health given by the city traffic engineers in the report. “It’s the city’s hometown industry,” Yaroslavsky said. “We want Fox to remain in the neighborhood and we want them to remain in the neighborhood in a way that’s compatible.”

“The focus will be zeroing in on their office capacity and insist it be reduced. . . . That to me is the expendable part of the projects. It’s got to be scaled back and substantially.”

Handelman, however, said that the office space is just what they need to run a state-of-the art studio and that he had no plans to sacrifice it, especially after receiving a glowing report that concludes that the environmental impact of the expansion plan can be neutralized.

Although there is significant economic benefit to be realized in keeping the thriving studio in the city--especially in this time of recession--the size of the project will be determined by its impact on traffic, Yaroslavsky said.

Lake, a frequent critic of the councilman, said she had not read the environmental impact report and could not comment on its specifics. But she noted that residents are living with the gridlock that has resulted from developments in which traffic was supposed to be mitigated.

NEXT STEP

A public comment period of 45 days ends Feb. 10, 1992, and remarks will be incorporated into a final Environmental Impact Report before the project is voted on by the city Planning Commission and the City Council. A copy of the report can be obtained by phoning the Planning Department of the city of Los Angeles at (213) 485-3508. Written testimony may be sent to the city of Los Angeles, Department of City Planning, Environmental Review Section, Room 655, City Hall, Los Angeles, Calif. 90012, Attention: Irene Chang, project manager. The public hearings have not been scheduled yet.