Valley Commentary : On Track for Prosperity : Underground mass transit stations often become clusters of economic activity. North Hollywood’s subway station should be no exception.

One nice thing about a public works project that advances at the stately pace of the Mendenhall Glacier is that, over the years, you personally get to see it in a sort of historic perspective. Moreover, since it’s coming for decades, there’s plenty of time to get out of the way--or into its path.

The North Hollywood subway line was first approved in 1975. I thought it was a good idea because it would help fight smog, to which I am allergic, and commuting headaches, to which I am even more allergic.

If the construction equipment recently installed among the ruined buildings at Lankershim and Chandler boulevards is for real--not the set of “Earthquake II”--then the NoHo subway station is finally being built. It will link the San Fernando Valley to the Metro Red Line tunneling its way under the Hollywood Hills.

It’s coming right at me, and I can hardly wait.

I became a North Hollywood homeowner specifically to take advantage of the subway. From what I have seen and read, the station is going to enhance my investment a lot.

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My view crystallized several years ago when I was on business in another city that has a working subway. I was up in a tall building something like the Universal City Hilton, looking out over a flat cityscape rather like the Valley. I noticed a strange pattern of trees and buildings stretching into the distance.

It was rather like the green patches that form around underground lawn sprinkler heads during water rationing times--spots where the lawn is still OK even though the rest of the grass has turned brown. The “sprinklers” were commercial developments around what I learned were underground mass transit stations. The greenery was the result of prosperity: public and private landscaping in the neighborhoods right around the stations.

The city was Toronto. I had seen something similar on visits to Atlanta, Miami and Washington, but the idea didn’t click until that trip. Within a few months I had bought a house in NoHo.

Of course I won’t be able to ride the subway for another seven years, but I have been making some inquiries about what to expect.

Our local transit people certainly think I have the right attitude. By their reckoning, commercial real estate within half a mile of each station should rightly be subject to a “special benefit assessment,” a kind of tax on the presumed extra income the owners will enjoy because of their location. Luckily, as a homeowner I’m exempt.

The economic analyses on file at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are encouraging too. They indicate that “densification” or increased building is likely to happen only in the commercial realm, right up close to the station. The houses nearby don’t seem destined to fall to the wrecking ball.

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This was confirmed by my own observations in other towns. The neighborhoods around close-in suburban subway stations comparable to NoHo don’t go to hell. In Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area, similar neighborhoods became quite fashionable. The experience of Sacramento and San Diego with light-rail stations is heartening.

I also read that in Switzerland, where conservative investment is a national religion, they’ve just voted to lay rails instead of roads between towns. Their reasons are environmental, but they wouldn’t do it if it threatened land values.

One anecdote about Atlanta came to my attention. Merchants in that city’s version of CityWalk threatened suit if a rapid transit station were to be installed anywhere nearby. This contrasted with the strenuous efforts of Universal CityWalk’s management, MCA, to have station entrance installed right at their front door. The Atlanta merchants relented, by the way, with good results.

Miami had a ferocious land boom, fueled by speculation, some years ago along the route of a new elevated train. Property values have remained high, although ridership never reached predicted levels.

None of this real estate stuff is exactly new. A recent history of the New York subway, “722 Miles,” by Clifton Hood, has pictures of open fields in the suburbs in 1910 strung with ribbons marking proposed streets around spots where subway stations were soon to pop up. The subway created a residential land boom wherever it was built.

The same thing happened in 1911 when the fabled Red Car trolley line first arrived in North Hollywood. Money, it seems, always follows the tracks.