The City on the Hill : The CityWalk shopping and dining center, combined with the neighboring Universal Studios complex, may alter the leisure habits of area residents.

“Five hundred channels and nothing on TV. Let’s go up the hill to CityWalk.”

That, I predict, is what Valley people are going to be saying to one another soon--right after their first visit to the new attraction above Universal City.

Scheduled to open formally this week, it is already thronged with folks who have discovered that MCA Development Co. has quietly begun letting the public in so the restaurants and stores can work out the kinks. CityWalk, which is its official name, is probably going to change the recreational center of gravity of the whole Valley. Maybe even all of L.A.

Heretofore, neither the Universal Studios tour nor the movie theaters in the Cahuenga Pass complex have really been anyone’s absolutely first idea of a place to go “out.” Then someone came up with a plan to connect the attractions with an avenue of shops and restaurants to compete with Santa Monica’s Third Street Mall, Old Pasadena and Melrose Avenue.

The press announcement recounts that the place was “built with the input of all kinds of people with all kinds of perspectives,” a reference to the fact that homeowners were consulted during the planning. They were evidently listened to, because CityWalk is bland, almost invisible, when viewed from outside. Inside it’s a different story.

Among the other people who provided input was an extravagantly talented band of architects and designers led by John Jerde. His crew set out to fashion a three-dimensional equivalent of a movie about Los Angeles--the city you came here to love but could never find.

They chose not to provide exact replicas of L.A. locales like City Hall or the San Fernando Mission, but to evoke L.A., using sights like an Oriental restaurant that used to be a bank, and expensive stores that have hired graffiti artists as decorators. I had heard that much in advance.

I drove up the hill on the morning when the construction tape was removed from the main entrance. Present were office workers and tourists on their way from the parking lot to the studio tour. They got the equivalent of a sneak preview, and a risky one, too, because not all the businesses had moved in yet.

I took along a sort of native guide, architect Craig Hodgetts. A friend of long standing and one of the designers of CityWalk, he specializes in, to quote a review of a complex he built for UCLA, “coaxing aesthetic gain from extreme economy of construction.” I wanted him to explain how he expected to coax a city experience out of a single street only two blocks long.

Suddenly CityWalk was full of people. And they were all grinning. How long has it been since you’ve seen people grinning in public in the Valley? As he surveyed the crowd, he said, “They already know what to do with this place.”

He pointed out that the tourists’ children took no time at all getting involved with some of the trees which were, mysteriously, producing big soap bubbles.

Yes, some of the stuff was hokey. And some was sophisticated, such as the way items from the collection of the Museum of Neon Art, which has a permanent exhibit at CityWalk, have been used on the facades of many buildings.

And there’s the outdoor cafe situation. You can sit in cool, comfortable nooks and crannies that regular shopping streets don’t provide.

“They’re never going to get people to go home,” I said. Sure enough, when I checked the next day, I learned that the restaurants and stores had had to stay open past their 11 p.m. closing time.

The Upstart Crow Bookstore/Coffeehouse had been jammed till after midnight. That surprised MCA management, but what does it know about Camus’ plays and Callenbach’s “Ecotopia,” so far unconverted to tape or film?

Whether from Iowa, Glendale or Taipei, the citywalkers promptly started acting like habitues.

“John Jerde’s phone is going to be ringing off the hook,” Hodgetts predicted wryly. “Every city in the world is going to want one of these.” He was talking about finding a hill and condensing the best features of the city into a compact space like CityWalk. And therein lies a certain irony.

For years, places like London and San Francisco have fretted that they would end up being converted to theme parks--while L.A. fretted that it would never become a city at all but remain a sort of gigantic, characterless, roadside attraction. Turnabout is fair play.

What MCA has done, we decided as we walked along together, is turn a theme park on the hill into a real city.