Developers Laud Revised Commercial Area Plan : Warner Center: L.A. planners, however, will send the 20-year blueprint back for changes to help make building easier and less expensive.
A year after they blasted a blueprint for growth in Warner Center as too restrictive and too expensive, developers on Thursday praised a revised plan for the area--but nonetheless asked city planners for still more concessions.
And the Los Angeles City Planning Commission appeared to agree with their requests, ordering its staff to change the plan yet again to make building in Warner Center easier and cheaper, especially during a struggling economy.
“If we want to have development in these centers . . . then we have to make it worthwhile to be in that center,” Commission President William G. Luddy said.
Luddy’s remarks at a public hearing echoed comments from developers who suggested that the limping economy may force the city to make additional concessions in order to attract new building in Warner Center.
During the building boom of the 1980s, planners said, it was easier to charge developers for public improvements. But developers suggested that in a sluggish economic climate, it may benefit the city to ease some of the immediate financial burden on developers in order to reap long-term benefits.
The most controversial element of the proposed plan remains the fee that developers would be charged for each afternoon car trip that their projects would generate. Developers say the fee, intended to pay for transportation improvements, is too high and that such improvements could be financed through other means, perhaps through public funds.
Some developers also said they do not want to pay the proposed fee because they would underwrite transportation projects that would benefit the surrounding community more than Warner Center itself.
The planning philosophy behind Warner Center is to concentrate commercial and industrial developments to prevent them from intruding into residential neighborhoods in the west San Fernando Valley. The increased density is to be offset by public transportation improvements.
Luddy’s comments heartened developers who have lobbied since last summer to ease growth restrictions and to lower the traffic fees proposed in the Warner Center Specific Plan, which will guide new building in the area for the next 20 years.
At the same time, the remarks upset a representative of Councilwoman Joy Picus, who urged commissioners not to give too much away and to seek consensus among builders and local residents over the scale and style of development in Warner Center.
“Public support for Warner Center will be lost if the taxpayers have to pay for these improvements,” said Jim Dawson, Picus’ planning deputy. “Somebody has to pay for them, and that burden should not be placed on the taxpayer.”
Overall, however, response on Thursday to the revised plan was considerably more favorable--by developers and homeowners alike--than when it was initially released last summer.
At that time, builders complained that a proposed development cap of 26 million square feet was too low and that a $15,000 fee for each afternoon car trip generated by their projects was too high.
Homeowners bemoaned proposals to build super highways that would crisscross Warner Center with overpasses.
Since then, planners have removed some of the more onerous sections of the plan. They cut traffic fees from nearly $15,000 to about $7,500, increased the cap on development to 35.7 million square feet and removed from the plan all but one flyover bridge at Topanga Canyon and Victory boulevards.
Such traffic improvements will not be needed, the revised plan says, because Warner Center is now scheduled to be connected to a commuter rail network, a transportation option not considered in the earlier center plan. The new plan also would mandate tough restrictions on the number of parking spaces for solo drivers to encourage more car-pooling.
In addition, the plan calls for new buildings to go up in four incremental steps, and would require that some key traffic improvements be completed before a new step could begin. Each phase also would be reviewed publicly to assess its effect on the center and surrounding community.
Even so, major property owners in Warner Center said the revised plan--with fees for low-income housing, child-care and public art--still is too expensive to encourage further development.
“These fees, as they all combine together, are going to set up circumstances where development is just not feasible,” said John Lyda, development director for the company that owns Topanga Plaza shopping center.
NEXT STEP
Los Angeles city planners will present further revisions to the Warner Center Specific Plan later this summer to the Planning Commission. The commission is expected to vote on the final plan--eight years in the making--in late August. If adopted by the City Council, the plan would govern development for the next 20 years in the area north of the Ventura Freeway between De Soto Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
