The Stage Is Set : If Lankershim Boulevard doesn’t look like a theater district, just wait. A hearty band of entrepreneurs has sprung up in North Hollywood.

You can help save industry in the Valley. Go see a new play. Or a poetry reading at a coffee shop.

Yup, I mean it. The burgeoning North Hollywood arts district, showcasing writers and artists of the future, is the setting of a big festival this weekend. According to my way of reckoning, this kind of activity is as important to the Valley’s film and TV industry as the famous “Skunk Works” were to Lockheed and aerospace.

With the Cold War over, we need another industrial base. And America’s next powerhouse export industry is entertainment. The handiwork of dramatists and lyricists has always ranked high in the dollars brought from overseas, second only to arms sales as a source of U. S. export income. America’s other big export industry is agriculture, not really a local option unless we go back to growing wheat in North Hollywood, as Isaac Lankershim did a hundred years ago.

So let’s count ourselves lucky that a hearty band of artistic entrepreneurs has set up shop around the intersection of Lankershim’s namesake boulevard and Magnolia Avenue and dubbed it NoHo.

If Lankershim doesn’t exactly look like a theater district now, just wait. Like crocuses piercing the snow, theaters are appearing among the retailers and auto dealerships.

“I see 30 theaters around Lankershim between Universal CityWalk and the coming North Hollywood subway station,” predicts David Cox, co-founder of American Renegade Theatre, one of a dozen venues already in operation in NoHo.

His colleague, R. J. Bonds, runs the R&D; part of the enterprise. It’s called the foundry.

“It’s where we hammer out new works and get maximal dramatic effect with minimal scenery, et cetera,” Bonds explains. “We’ve come up with industrial strength theater here.”

Cox, some say, coined the name NoHo in an episode of nostalgia for his former home in Manhattan.

In any case, Jim Mahfet, executive director of the Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, credits this newspaper with picking up on the concept, running a big feature article in November and “putting NoHo on the map.” That article actually sparked the creation of a new newspaper, the NoHo News, according to its publisher, Jim Berg.

How in the world, you may wonder, can I as a homeowner near a planned subway stop, down the hill from a tourist attraction, really hope that such goings-on will help the value of my house? I bought here four years ago when I felt certain they were actually going to build the things. Prices were low--which is why the theater people, painters, dancers, musicians and others who work in “the biz” moved in. “Fierce competitors like auto dealers move in next to one another and get along, and so can we,” Cox says.

I found myself saying, “Here comes the neighborhood.” There was quality writing on display in the theaters multiplying between Cahuenga, Tujunga, Camarillo and Burbank.

“We’re throwing rocks in the lake and we’re already making waves,” Bonds says. Good writing is the lifeblood of the biz, the way to attract money. You know money’s on the way into a neighborhood when you smell fresh paint as you walk down the street.

It’s the happy history of areas between subway stops where there’s quality entertainment--Toronto and Tokyo are two examples I know of personally--that folks make an excursion out of the whole thing. One gets off the subway at one stop and strolls a tree-lined boulevard to get to the other stop, thence on home.

The management of the newly opened but already very successful Universal CityWalk is considering a local version of this, a hotel, dinner and theater package arrangement with the NoHo group where one might, for instance, shop and dine at CityWalk at the south end of Lankershim and ride a fancy bus down the hill to NoHo for a show and an espresso.

Jim Hescox, senior vice president of MCA Development, CityWalk’s owner, says, “The NoHo theaters have already reached critical mass. You can already see unique plays there. I think they really will achieve the theater district status they’re talking about.”

When the MTA subway is finished in a few years, everybody will be able to arrive at either Universal City/Campo de Cahuenga or North Hollywood, go up a few steps to the boulevard and have fun. And probably see works by people who are going to be big in the biz eventually. There’s no need to wait for the MTA or MCA. This weekend you can get into the swing of things by visiting the theaters, galleries, cafes and restaurants that are participating in the NoHo Performing Arts Festival.

Go catch a glimpse of the future.