Plan Would Double Warner Center Size, Make It Urban Hub

Warner Center would be San Fernando Valley’s unrivaled urban hub under a master plan released Wednesday that envisions the office-retail complex more than doubling its current size, served by commuter rail lines and populated by employees living nearby.

The most striking feature of the revised Warner Center Specific Plan, drafted by the city Planning Department, is that it would permit 35.4 million square feet of office-retail development, more than twice the existing 15 million square feet in the 924-acre area covered by the plan.

The plan drew immediate fire from Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the area. She said the proposal allows for excessive development, pointing out that she had recommended a 21-million-square-foot cap and that a citizens group had called for a 26-million-square-foot limit.

“The 35 million was pulled out of nowhere by the Planning Commission,” she said. “Why ask citizens to put in their time developing the project if their recommendations are ignored?”

The 35.4-million-square-foot cap proposed is 8.6 million square feet more than the size allowed in the specific plan prepared by city planners and released last July. Most of this additional development would be allowed in the eastern half of the plan area, between Canoga Avenue on the west and De Soto Avenue on the east.

The plan area’s boundaries are generally Vanowen Street on the north, De Soto Avenue on the east, the Ventura Freeway on the south and Topanga Canyon Boulevard on the west.

In November, the city’s five-member Planning Commission complained that the department’s first plan was cramped and violated a 20-year-old tenet of city planning--that Warner Center should become an urban focal point.

The commission also warned that if office-retail growth were not channeled into Warner Center, it would creep into fringe areas and affect residential neighborhoods more.

The original plan also was criticized by Picus because it envisioned the construction of elevated streets through Warner Center to deal with the additional traffic burdens posed by the project.

The plan released Wednesday not only would significantly boost the square footage allowed, but also would eliminate the flyovers.

The revised plan relies more on rail transit links to deal with the transportation demands created by increased development.

An east-west link would be provided by Metro Rail, according to the plan. Meanwhile, people living to the north or in Simi Valley could commute to Warner Center on a possible rail line running along the Canoga Corridor to the Chatsworth commuter rail station.

Such rail links and scores of other transportation improvements to ease traffic would be partially financed by a trip fee imposed on developers. The original specific plan calculated that developers would need to pay a fee of $14,990 for every trip generated by their projects.

However, the plan released Wednesday contains no specific trip fee amount. City planning executives have said they will develop one in coming weeks but projected that the new fee will be about $10,000.

Even the reduced trip fee amount has unsettled many. When staff announced this week that they had trimmed the fee by a third, planning commissioners claimed it was still too high and would inhibit development.

Also missing from the revised plan is an estimated cost of all the transit improvements needed to accommodate the new growth. These costs were set at a whopping $1.3 billion for the first plan.

City planning officials and developers did not return phone calls about the plan. “We haven’t had time to read it,” said a public relations consultant representing one developer group with huge property holdings in Warner Center.

In another major departure from the original plan, the revised document seeks to encourage residential development.

The plan gives construction bonuses and reduces trip fees for developers who build mixed-use projects that combine office/retail with residential uses. The plan also provides that developers may build residential projects on sites zoned for manufacturing.

The Specific Plan now must run a gantlet of hearings before the Planning Commission and the City Council.