Limited Common Ground With MCA

* In the battle of giants over the location of a subway station in Studio City, the homeowners in the area appear to be the losers. We are the people who most clearly understand the implications of the decisions being made in our behalf, yet our voices go unrecognized, or when heard, are misunderstood.

A recent Times column said, “North Hollywood residents supporting MCA, organized by company executive Christine Hanson, were in the audience. Some of them testified for MCA.”

I testified for the Studio City Residents Assn. It so happens that my testimony supported the MCA position. That position, as I stated at the hearing, was arrived at by a board of directors which was instructed by a membership conversant with all of the issues to speak in favor of a station proposed by MCA. In the future, if MCA changes its position, we could find ourselves, as we have in the past, on opposite sides of the issues. However, at this time, our interests, while not identical, do coincide.

The association has worked for many years to achieve traffic mitigation measures on the Barham Blvd./Cahuenga Pass corridor. We were at the stage of completion of the engineering phases when MTA, which was to pay for the final phase, found itself without sufficient funds to fulfill their promise. When MCA proposed a station located on Cahuenga West, we found the proposal, overall, to be in the best interests of our membership and overwhelmingly supported by that membership. We were not happy about the parking structure that would be built but found that preferable to such a structure on Lankershim or Ventura Boulevard. We also saw that the needed traffic measures on the Cahuenga Pass corridor would then have to be made, proving a boon to the area and to Studio City.

The Studio City Residents Assn. believes in keeping our eyes on the end goal, which in this case means a station in our community having the least possible negative effects on our neighborhoods, and bringing with it the greatest enhancements. We believe that the MCA-proposed station would cause the least disruption to our neighborhoods, lend itself to the best traffic mitigation and provide the greatest security to our residents. If that means we are in alliance with the giant, so be it. You can call us realists, or pragmatists, or opportunists. But please don’t put us in a class with lobbyists. Because we don’t get paid for this.

POLLY WARD

Vice President

Studio City Residents Assn.