Conditions Placed on Expansion of Warner Center

A long-awaited plan to allow development within Warner Center to more than double in size was approved Tuesday by a Los Angeles City Council panel.

The increase, however, would be allowed only as traffic improvements are made to accommodate thousands of vehicles that would be drawn to the area each day.

The Warner Center Specific Plan, as approved by the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, would permit up to 35.7 million square feet of development in the San Fernando Valley’s premiere commercial core. The total includes 15 million square feet already built in the 1,100-acre area.

The committee action was greeted with relief by Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents the area, and the development community, who have been earnestly negotiating its details for the past year with city planners and homeowners.

Although it allows considerably more development than she initially had wanted, Picus on Tuesday called the Specific Plan a “model for a job-friendly community that cares about its neighbors.”

Gary L. Morris, representing the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., praised the plan as the product of a consensus effort involving the property owners, homeowners and Picus’ office.

Meanwhile, even as he lauded the plan, Richard Volpert, attorney for Warner family interests that partly own a 30-acre site in the plan area, said the eight-year process had “sometimes seemed Kafka-esque.”

“It’s hard to explain to intelligent people why it should take eight years,” he said.

Private land-use consultant David Grannis, who represents a consortium of property owners in the area, said he could not foresee when the first major projects would be built in the area under the plan. “The economy is not exactly booming now,” he said.

The Specific Plan still must be reviewed by the city attorney and approved by the entire council, a process that is not likely to be completed until early this summer.

Picus initially backed a plan to permit only 26 million square feet of development in Warner Center.

However, that version was discarded by the city’s Planning Commission, whose members claimed that its suffocating restrictions and high cost would stop any new development in the area. Picus was quoted as saying the commission action ignored the residential community and “has no rationale at all.”

The plan adopted Tuesday would require developers to pay a minimum of $4,907 for each auto trip their projects generate to fund a series of ambitious transportation improvements designed to stabilize traffic conditions in the area.

Originally, the fees were set at about $16,000 but were lowered after developers complained of the high cost. Some proposed traffic improvements, such as elevated streets, were eliminated from the plan, reducing the cost.

The fees on new Warner Center projects will produce an estimated $168 million to pay for $673 million in traffic improvements.

According to Deputy Planning Director Robert Sutton, the plan allows development to proceed only if traffic mitigation measures are installed as well.

To enforce this, the build-out of the plan is to occur in phases. At each phase, the City Council must first determine that all the plan’s traffic mitigation requirements for that phase have been met. Otherwise, no new development may occur. The checkpoints are set at 20.5 million, 26.5 million and 31.5 million square feet.

For example, a final build-out of the plan can only proceed if Warner Center is linked to Metro Rail and Metrolink commuter rail lines, Sutton said.

Major projects that have been planned for Warner Center have included large expansions of the Promenade Mall and Topanga Plaza shopping areas and construction of major office complexes.