Work Finally Begins on Metrolink Station : Sylmar: The $1.7-million facility will be the second stop on the route from Santa Clarita to downtown L.A. A dispute over property value delayed start-up.

After months of delay, city officials from Los Angeles and San Fernando broke ground Monday morning on a $1.7-million Metrolink station, scheduled to serve residents from the east San Fernando Valley by the start of July.

Bulldozers were busy leveling the 5.8-acre site in Sylmar at Hubbard and 1st streets, the second of five stops on the commuter line from Santa Clarita to downtown Los Angeles, as politicians donned hard hats and dug into the dusty earth with golden shovels.

“It hasn’t been easy . . . we’ve had to have a lot of patience,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi. “But it’s finally going to mean that the rest of the city will realize that we have something up here in the San Fernando Valley.”

Real estate negotiations delayed construction for months. “It came much later than sooner,” San Fernando City Councilwoman Rosa Chacon said.

The $1.7 million Sylmar/San Fernando station will consist of a canopy, a platform and a 420-space parking lot, said Phil Aker, supervising transportation planner for the transportation department. Also included is an extension of 1st Street, an effort to increase access to the station.

Construction of low-income housing next to the station and a $750,000 on-site child care facility are also planned.

Transit officials estimate the additional stop may boost daily ridership on the Santa Clarita route by 200 passengers to 700.

The route will start in Santa Clarita and then make stops in Sylmar, Burbank and Glendale, before continuing to Union Station in Los Angeles.

James Okazaki, chief of transit for the city of Los Angeles Department of Transportation, said he hopes the added stop will attract riders who work in Burbank or Glendale but who live in Granada Hills, Sylmar, Pacoima, the city of San Fernando or the southern tip of Santa Clarita.

The stop is expected to add less than three minutes to the route’s transportation time, said Aker. Completion of the station had been delayed because city officials could not agree on the property’s value with Friedman Bros. Investment Co., which owned the land and eventually sold it to the city at a cost of $2 million.

The city of Los Angeles will also foot the bill for two-thirds of the station’s construction costs, with the city of San Fernando financing the remaining third.

At Monday’s ceremony, Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman described the birth of Metrolink as a “momentous time” in the county’s history.

Edelman also reminded local officials and the public of plans to erect an $800,000 chain-link fence from Pacoima to Sylmar as the result of a number of deaths along the Metrolink route.

“We really have a safety problem,” Edelman said.

Since the commuter train debuted in October, there have been eight Metrolink fatalities, six of them on the stretch of track in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, where the commuter train runs from Santa Clarita to Los Angeles.

Last week, a 47-year-old woman apparently committed suicide by kneeling in the path of a Metrolink train in Sylmar. Two San Fernando teen-agers were killed March 5, prompting Metrolink officials to consider plans to build the fence.

Construction of the fence will begin, pending a vote by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to approve the funds.