STUDIO CITY : Group Fighting Plan for Metro Rail Lot

A Studio City residents association has joined the battle against a plan being considered by transportation officials to demolish a local racquet club to make room for a Metro Rail parking lot, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday.

“We are definitely against putting a parking lot on the site of a highly used recreational facility,” said Jack Gold, a board member of the Studio City Residents Assn. “It will just invite criminals to hang out where the cars are parked and commit robberies.”

Officials with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority say the six-acre facility on the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Vineland Avenue is one of three being considered to provide the 840 parking spaces needed for a station on Lankershim Boulevard in Universal City that will serve the Metro Red Line when construction is completed in the year 2000.

Gold said the residents association has invited the owner of the Racquet Centre, 10933 Ventura Blvd., to the group’s next board meeting to offer its assistance in saving the center.

A letter-writing campaign and petition drive was initiated last month in an effort to persuade MTA officials to spare the facility, which could be claimed under the agency’s eminent domain powers.

“I’ll do anything to keep the Racquet Centre from closing,” Gold said of the facility that has been in business for 16 years. “It’s a part of Studio City and they want to close it--boom--just like that. We won’t let that happen.”