Valley Commentary : Ventura Blvd. Plan Is Worth It : Review panel’s revisions will go to the City Council. Government and private sector should split costs.

The panel charged with implementing the city’s plan to revitalize Ventura Boulevard has issued a report recommending significant changes to the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan.

The plan was adopted in 1991 to control growth and fund boulevard improvements, but problems with the plan raise doubts about its outlook for success. The report of the Specific Plan Review Board culminates a two-year review with input from homeowners, businesses and commercial property owners. The recommendations now go to the City Council for consideration.

The recommendations seek to:

* Clarify the vision desired for Ventura Boulevard, tailoring the public improvements to match this vision.

* Provide an equitable and reliable funding structure.

* Simplify the plan.

* Ensure the future viability of the boulevard.

* Provide incentives for businesses that comply with the plan and strict enforcement with penalties for those that don’t.

* Create flexibility so the plan can automatically mitigate the level of growth incurred should it differ from the growth projected. Existing density restrictions were left intact.

Community groups prefer the boulevard as a commercially oriented corridor serving a balance of community and regional commercial needs--not to be reconfigured as a freeway alternate as the plan now dictates. Representatives from each of the five boulevard communities have been meeting with architects to create street-scape designs that celebrate each community’s unique qualities and heritage. Streetscape improvements include pedestrian lighting, brick crosswalks, landscaping, trees, park benches, coordinated signage and a village or town center in each community, similar to State Street in Santa Barbara, Old Pasadena and Palm Springs.

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They want design guidelines so buildings enhance a community. They want more public parking facilities, now in short supply. They want improved traffic flow but favor neighborhood shuttles and other traffic-reducing solutions over widening parts of the boulevard, a program of questionable feasibility and merit to increase automobile capacity.

Time after time as automobile capacity is increased it is filled like a vacuum as traffic shifts from the freeway and other streets to the path of least congestion. The boulevard’s communities do not want more regional traffic on the boulevard.

The question is how to fund this vision. The initial plan budget called for $222 million in improvements, of which $197 million (88%) was to be funded by boulevard property owners. This is an extraordinary figure, far more than owners should be asked to pay. The board first pared the budget down to a preliminary figure of $107 million while still providing public parking, streetscape improvements, utility undergrounding and shuttles for each community, plus all feasible widening.

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The board then recommends a structure to split the costs 50-50 over a 20-year period between government and the private sector. Despite tight public money, officials should support this long-term joint concept. They’ve presumed the private sector, facing the same fiscal conditions, is somehow in better shape to afford this financial responsibility, and we’re only talking about returning a small fraction of the tax base derived from a healthy Ventura Boulevard spread over 20 years.

The private sector’s share would be $51 million (down from $197 million) raised through a combination of corridor improvement fees and an assessment district.

The existing “trip fees” would be changed to simplified and reduced “corridor improvement fees.” The fee would be charged on a per-square-foot basis and vary depending on the property’s broad use category, i.e. retail, office, restaurant. Except for major changes of use, this fee would only apply to new development.

The assessment district would raise $39 million over 15 to 20 years (down from $97 million). This assessment would be spread over all properties with amounts linked to the benefit derived by each.

Property owners battered by the recession and the Northridge earthquake, might well object to an assessment district at any level. We sympathize and believe the assessments could be phased in over a period of years. Other areas have successfully used districts to fund public improvements and become more desirable, with the assessment often offset by increased property values and rents.

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Most boulevard properties are older, with substandard parking and other conditions. Yet boulevard businesses must compete with areas such as Universal CityWalk, the 3rd Street Promenade, Old Pasadena, regional malls and other parts of the Valley for business. We hope property owners and community groups along the boulevard will recognize the need to upgrade Ventura Boulevard. We need their support to implement these recommendations and ensure that the boulevard remains viable as one of the Valley’s premier commercial corridors.