ENCINO : Input Sought on Boulevard Upgrade

A citizens advisory group will hold a series of community meetings this summer and fall to get public comment on preliminary concepts for street and sidewalk improvements on Ventura Boulevard.

The Urban Design/Streetscape Subcommittee of the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan Review Board will hold a community meeting in Encino on Aug. 9 and in Studio City on Sept. 28. The dates of the Sherman Oaks and Tarzana meetings have not been set.

Woodland Hills is the furthest along in the process of creating a design plan for the street, with architects and advisory group members already refining their conceptual plan to incorporate public comments given at a May 18 meeting.

Two important issues for the program are who will pay for it and how much each payee will have to contribute.

The plan review board is considering two possibilities for raising the money: to create either a benefit assessment district that would tax property owners, or a business improvement district that would tax business owners.

A “very ballpark figure” for what property owners might have to pay if a benefit assessment district is created is 1 cent per square foot of their building per month for 15 years, according to Jeff Brain, chairman of the plan review board.

That means that a landlord who owns a 3,000-square-foot property on Ventura Boulevard would be assessed $30 a month for 15 years. Brain cautioned that the formula is merely intended to provide a point of reference. A different formula might be used, he said.

The new assessments would pay for a variety of improvements on the boulevard--such as tree plantings, a shuttle-bus system and parking structures--that are envisioned to increase business, allowing the assessed parties to recoup their costs.

The total budget for Streetscape improvements is $17 million, or $1 million per mile along the boulevard from Woodland Hills to Studio City.

After the first round of community meetings, the Streetscape subcommittee will adjust its sketches to incorporate public input, and then hold a second round of meetings to finalize the design concepts.

Brain said he expected the subcommittee to complete its recommendations, which will go to the city Planning Department, by the end of the year. Actual work on the program probably will not begin until late 1995, Brain predicted.