Downtown Face Lift Set to Start in Summer : Redevelopment: $149 million raised from bond issues will be used to make the area pedestrian-friendly, replace City Hall and add parks.

Look around this Westside town and what do you see? Sidewalks teeming with pedestrians. Yuppies sipping cappuccino in one of many sidewalk cafes. The atmosphere here is sophisticated, yet small-town.

Where are you? Try Culver City. That’s what city planners who are embarking on ambitious plans to revitalize a blighted downtown district this summer hope to achieve.

The Culver City Redevelopment Agency plans to break ground this summer on an $11.8-million streetscape project and a $34-million City Hall. Add to this a recently completed fire station, a four-level parking structure, a renovated Ivy Substation, and the overhauled Culver Hotel, and the area should emerge, phoenix-like, as a bustling city center with a distinctly historical feel, officials say.

The revitalization project will boost Culver City out of relative obscurity and into premiere Westside city status, said Steven Gourley, chairman of the Redevelopment Agency.

Planners envision that businesses will move in, pouring tax revenues into city coffers, and families and workers at nearby movie studios will shop and mingle in the city’s new core.

“I’m hoping to answer the question, ‘Where is Culver City?’ ” Gourley said. “This will answer it.”

As it is now, downtown just doesn’t cut it for longtime resident and community activist Jackie McCain. Too many shops are vacant and there’s not much to do.

“It just isn’t a downtown,” she said. “We don’t have a drugstore. We don’t have a place you can go in and buy stationery. . . . It just looks messy. . . . It’s a lonesome downtown.”

There will be a hefty price to pay for the planned metamorphosis, beyond the financial one. The biggest projects, City Hall and streetscape, begin at the same time, promising to cause construction-related disorder for nearby residents and headaches for drivers trying to navigate torn-up streets.

On the other hand, it may be a good thing to get it all over with at once, said Debbie Rich, deputy director of the Redevelopment Agency.

“It will be a maximum amount of inconvenience for a minimum amount of time,” she said.

The streetscape project will cause the most widespread disruption, but it also promises to have the most impact on the character of downtown.

Workers will widen the sidewalk on the north side of Culver Boulevard from Duquesne Avenue to Venice Boulevard, making room for restaurants to open outdoor cafes.

Throughout the downtown district there will be generous use of trees and flower-filled planters. Sidewalks will have brick embellishments. Reproduced hardware, such as lamps, benches and trash cans, will be reminiscent of olden days.

The plans call for realignment of the X-configured intersection at Washington and Culver boulevards, which is riddled with stop signs and has led to many near-misses. Cars traveling east on Washington will merge with Culver before turning right back onto Washington.

The bypassed stretch of Washington will be turned into a small green area called Town Park.

To minimize disruption during the multi-phased streetscape project, a public information trailer located across the street from Culver Studios will dispense information and take complaints.

Owners of two longtime downtown business establishments, Stellar True Value Hardware and Sagebrush Cantina, plan to battle an inevitable loss in business because of construction with promotional events and specials. They say the inconvenience will be worth it in the long run.

“We’re really excited about what it’s going to be like,” said Stellar’s co-owner Robert Barber. “We think it’s going to draw other businesses down here, which will draw business for all of us.”

Sagebrush owner Penny Burton also plans to tap into the streetscape construction work force.

“You’ve got a hundred men, they’ll have to eat somewhere,” she said.

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The streetscape plans incorporate the findings of a city-organized study group made up of residents, community organizations and urban planning professionals. The group of about 150 people set out two years ago on a three-day walk about the downtown area, which they dubbed a “charette.”

Participants said they wanted a downtown area that was pedestrian friendly and had a small-town flavor, according to McCain, who recalls jotting down notes during the charette, with husband Charles at her side. They also wanted it to be fun.

“We wanted it to be an active downtown,” McCain said. “Not to close up at 5 and be a dead downtown. We wanted a place where you could go and sit and meet friends and have lunch.”

McCain said she is satisfied that city planners incorporated the charette findings into the street-scape plans.

“The only thing I disapprove of is the jacaranda trees,” she said. Although the tree’s purple blooms are strikingly pretty, they are messy and can be a slippery hazard if allowed to accumulate.

To help complete the transformation of downtown beyond the sidewalks, the agency plans to offer low-interest loans for business owners to renovate their storefronts.

The new City Hall will be built at the same site as the old one, on the south side of Culver Boulevard between Duquesne Avenue and Lafayette Place. City planners found it would cost more to renovate the old building to meet earthquake safety codes than to build one large enough for the entire city work force, which is now spread out in three places, Rich said.

But the old City Hall will live on. The facade of the old building will be reconstructed, using original bricks, at the entrance of the planned Heritage Park, an outdoor wing adjacent to the 88,000-square-foot City Hall complex.

Heritage Park will have a reflecting pool and art installations that illustrate the city’s history, from the Gabrielino Indians who used to fish upon the shores of La Ballona Creek to movie studio lore. City Hall and the park should be finished in 2 1/2 years.

Meanwhile, other downtown landmarks are near completion.

A major renovation of the Culver Hotel, built by city founder Harry Culver in 1924, is complete except for the ground floor. Louis Catlett, general partner in the investment company Historic Hollywood Properties, purchased the six-story brick building in 1987 for “between $1 (million) and $2 million.”

And it’s a good thing he stepped in. During the charette, about half of the participants favored tearing down the Culver Hotel, McCain said. They saw the run-down building as an eyesore inhabited by low-income renters that stood in the way of efforts to streamline traffic in the confusing intersection. They thought it would cost the city too much to renovate.

The city did lend Catlett a hand. The Redevelopment Agency provided a $600,000 construction loan to help Catlett weather the recession.

The hotel is considered by many as the centerpiece of the downtown area. Harry Culver, a smooth-talking real estate baron and visionary, took clients to its rooftop to point out lots that were for sale. The wedge-shaped architecture was in keeping with buildings on New York City’s Madison Avenue, which Culver reputedly hoped his city would someday rival.

Another landmark a block south on Washington, the Culver Theatre, has not been so lucky. The theater was built in the late 1940s in the Moderne-style. The Redevelopment Agency, which owns the building, is still looking for a private investor to bring its 40-foot high marquee and 1,000-seat interior back to life as a playhouse, or some other cultural center.

There is one more project that will add to the construction frenzy in the downtown area this summer. The Culver City Unified School District will be swinging the hammer on a major renovation of its headquarter offices at 4034 Irving Place.

The $1.3-million renovation project is funded with Redevelopment Agency dollars and should take a year to complete, said schools Supt. Curtis Rethmeyer.

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In 1989, the Redevelopment Agency raised $149 million through bond issues in anticipation of the downtown renovation and other projects, Rich said. In addition to a yearly income of $15 million, all of the agency’s money must be reinvested in the city’s predesignated redevelopment project areas. (Under state law, cities can recapture a portion of property taxes generated in designated redevelopment areas as a scheme designed to eliminate blight.)

Regardless of the infusion of cash, turning downtown around is “not going to happen overnight,” McCain said. It will take a lot of faith and patience.

“Now with the recession, tenants aren’t going to come knocking at our door,” she said. “But when things do turn around, “we’re going to be ready.”