Hearing on Fox Expansion Plans Draws a Full House : Development: Some residents say studio’s huge complex would devalue the neighborhood. Others say jobs are at stake.
More than 650 people crammed into a hotel meeting room Monday to express opinions on whether the Fox Studios expansion project will ruin the Westside if it is built, or ruin the local economy if it is not.
The dispute over the project has, as one speaker noted, pitted neighbor against neighbor.
“We are at the heart of this issue,” said Val Cole, president of California Country Club Homes Assn., which represents one of the areas most affected by the development. “Five years from now we’ll be asking, ‘Who let this happen?’ ”
Fox supporters pressed hard on the economic benefits of keeping Fox and its jobs in the area. “Fox has a right to be there,” said resident Mary Grea, who lives nearby. “If you want to live in a quiet area where you can walk your children to school, move out to the Simi Valley.”
The studio, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, is proposing a $200-million, 771,000-square-foot expansion project, the majority of it to be new office space, on its 53-acre parcel on the western periphery of Century City.
The plan is to consolidate Fox’s movie and television operations, including 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. and KTTV-TV, at one site in a 1.89-million-square-foot entertainment facility.
To do that, Fox needs a series of approvals from the city because it is locked into a zoning commitment to build condominiums on its valuable Westside land. Under that plan, drafted more than a decade ago, production facilities would be moved to the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Though Fox officials now want the facilities to stay on their lot, which is dotted with historic buildings from the early days of filmmaking, they threaten to pull up stakes and move elsewhere if they do not get the approvals they seek.
If their plan for the project is approved, daily car trips to the studio will more than double. Traffic consultants from Fox and the city have concluded that the increased flow could be ameliorated by street widening, turn lanes and other measures--a key point in the dispute with residents.
The daylong hearing was an information-gathering prelude to hearings before the Los Angeles Planning Commission and ultimately the City Council.
Friends of Fox, which calls itself the largest citizens’ group in support of a development in the city’s history, maintained that 459 of its members turned out for the hearing. They group claims a membership of 10,000, including businesses, residents and employees.
After speeches by actors Tom Skerritt of the television series “Picket Fences” and Susan Ruttan of “L.A. Law,” the group paraded from the Century Plaza next door to the Century Towers, where the hearing was held. Those who did not wish to stay at the hearing all day were provided by Fox with closed-circuit television and refreshments in a hospitality suite.
Opponents were out in force too, countering red “Friends of Fox” buttons with red tags of their own, saying “Save the Westside; Stop Fox.” A homeowner representative said she handed out more than 300 tags.
Homeowner groups provided their own traffic consultant and economist, both of whom questioned the assumptions on which Fox and the city paint their picture of traffic controls and the studio’s benefits to the area. The opposition’s economist, Julie Liebeskind, estimated that the project would cost affected homeowners $3 million in lowered property values.
Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the area and is crucial to the project’s approval, used the hearing to lay out his own conditions. Yaroslavsky said he supports the project if it is built in three phases and all measures to reduce traffic are put in first. He said he wants to see nearly 100,000 square feet of office space cut.
Yaroslavsky said he would insist that Fox agree to keep to its commitments about how much traffic it would generate or be barred from going forward to another phase. He said it will be necessary for the city and Fox to constantly monitor traffic.
“It is my view that the Fox Studio expansion proposal need not be a choice between neighborhood protection and jobs,” he said. “We can and should strive for both.
“It would be folly on our part if we were either to accept Fox’s application as is, or reject it outright as some are demanding of the city.”
