Grant to Fund Commuter Work Center : Antelope Valley: The $153,550 will be used toward establishing a Lancaster facility with satellite workstations. The goal is to get some employees off the freeways.

The Los Angeles County government took the first major step Tuesday toward establishing a commuter work center in Lancaster by accepting a $153,550 grant from the county Transportation Commission.

The center will offer satellite workstations equipped with computers to employees of both private companies and public agencies in an attempt to get a few of the 38,000 commuters from the Antelope Valley off the freeway to Los Angeles. The service will be free the first year.

The county has applied for another grant--of the same size--from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and has received donations of such items as computers, printers and office furniture, said Beverly Campbell, assistant county administrative officer. Campbell said the center could open as early as January.

The “telebusiness center” will be patterned after similar experiments in the country. They give employees an opportunity to work nearer their homes, often for only one day a week. The center will have 20 workstations, a conference room and electronic linkages ranging from computers to interactive video, to home offices.

Elsewhere, the centers have proved popular with workers and their bosses, though none of the centers have been able to bring in enough money to give up public funding. The only private work center attempted to date, in Seattle, proved too expensive to attract businesses.

Campbell said reaction from local businesses has been encouraging. “But then you have to remember, it’s free for the first year,” she said. During the center’s second year of operation, she said, the county will charge about $450 a month for each workstation. The county began looking at the possibility of setting up a work center in the Antelope Valley after learning from commuter surveys that at least 83% of the estimated 38,000 commuters drive alone.

The county will not provide money for the center, but will offer technical and administrative assistance and access to the Department of Regional Planning’s teleconferencing system. The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission has access to funds of its own from sales taxes, bond measures and federal grants.