Payment Extension Urged for Builders : Ventura Boulevard: The L.A. committee proposes giving developers four years to finance traffic improvements that affect the thoroughfare. Planners last summer OKd a 10-year period.

Developers who have built projects that have added traffic to Ventura Boulevard, San Fernando Valley’s main commercial thoroughfare, should get four years rather than two to pay fees for traffic improvements, a City Council panel said Tuesday.

After a brief debate, the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted 3 to 0 to amend the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, allowing 160 recession-pinched developers to pay the estimated $13.2 million in fees they owe over the longer period.

Nevertheless, a representative of developers complained that having to pay the fees within four years could drive some developers into bankruptcy.

“They just don’t understand the seriousness of the situation,” said Benjamin Reznik, who represents a number of boulevard developers. One of his clients owes $452,000 in fees, and another owes $205,000.

The fees are a key part of the Specific Plan, adopted by the council in January, 1991, to regulate growth along Ventura Boulevard. The language of the existing plan gives affected developers only two years to pay their fees, a schedule they say is far too tight.

To date, only about $1 million of the fees due have been paid.

The committee’s recommendations still require full council approval to become law.

Heeding the complaints of developers, the city Planning Commission last summer voted to approve a 10-year payment plan.

But the council’s planning committee Tuesday agreed with city staff members that a 10-year schedule would cripple the plan.

It “would make the funding and financing of staffing and plan improvements very difficult,” said Ed Rowe, general manager of the city Department of Transportation.

Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents more of Ventura Boulevard than any other city lawmaker, and four other council members presenting portions of the 17-mile street have agreed on the four-year plan, said Cindy Miscikowski, Braude’s chief deputy.

During the committee’s discussion, Councilman Hal Bernson, the panel chairman, said he was sympathetic to developers, and that the fees contribute to the city’s “unfriendly reputation” of being tough on business.

When city officials said the salaries of staff members deployed to implement the Specific Plan had to be paid with the fees or they could not be hired, Bernson said: “I’m worried about the future of the Valley and of Ventura Boulevard, not how we’re going to pay for staff.”

Nevertheless, Bernson finally voted for only a two-year extension.

Affected by the payment plan would be the Ventura Boulevard developers whose projects were approved between November, 1985, when the first of various interim control ordinances to slow development along the street was approved, and early 1991, when the final Specific Plan was adopted.

These developers signed agreements to pay whatever “trip,” or traffic improvement fees, were eventually in the Specific Plan.

But when the final plan was adopted--with fees running as high as $4,200 per trip generated by projects in Encino and Sherman Oaks--some developers cried foul.

Besides, others complained, the economy was making it very difficult to pay any fees. In response, Braude introduced a motion urging that some relief plan be adopted.

Craig Lawson, representing Home Savings of America, said his client got a trip-fee bill of $400,000 for a 35,000-square-foot project and wants a credit against that bill for about $100,000 in street improvements Home Savings put in.

“We’re paying twice under this system,” Lawson complained. “And it’s not just big developers who are being hit, it’s a lot of small businesses.”

Under the proposal adopted Tuesday, developers also could ask for a temporary extension of their payment schedule beyond four years if they proved to city officials that their project would not actually generate the traffic projected by the formulas used to calculate the fees.

Future developers will still have to pay the fee in two years.

BACKGROUND

The Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council in January, 1991, to guide development along the major thoroughfare from Woodland Hills to Studio City.

The plan sets a number of regulations, including limiting the size, height and use of buildings on the boulevard, which is often referred to as San Fernando Valley’s “Main Street.”

The plan also is supposed to provide money to improve the boulevard. Among the goals of the plan are additional turn lanes, new parking facilities and shade trees and park benches where shoppers and residents could relax, according to officials with the city Department of Transportation.