Revitalization Demands Imagination : New program to improve areas including downtown Sun Valley is promising. But creative planning is needed to make the most of outside funding.

A new effort organized by City Hall holds out the promise of significant improvement of run-down commercial streets through several Los Angeles neighborhoods, including the central business district of Sun Valley here in the northeast San Fernando Valley. However, making the best use of outside funding will require imaginative planning in addition to simply fixing things up as they now exist.

The program, known as the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, or LANI, will infuse $2 million to $5 million in federal transportation money into each of eight commercial zones over the next two years. The ostensible purpose is to improve storefronts and sidewalk environments. But the real goal ought to be a long-term boost in economic activity.

Sun Valley’s affected street is a shabby stretch of Sunland Boulevard from the Golden State Freeway south to Strathern Avenue. Bisected by the Southern Pacific/Metrolink railroad tracks, it shows the effects of four decades of economic decline, demographic shifts, rapid changes in merchandising practices and retail services, and the disadvantage of an aging building stock.

The project needs an aggressive and comprehensive planning effort aimed toward a more varied mix of activities than the low-end services and convenience retailing which now predominate. The depth of the commercial properties along both sides of the street is shallow. Space for reconfiguration and additional off-street parking is severely limited. It will surely be a challenge to contend with the insufficient parking, traffic bottlenecks and overriding image of economic decline.

The most basic question will be whether to pursue a relatively timid, superficial approach or begin to deal with or analyze the area on a more basic level. The greatest mistake would be to spend this newfound Clintonesque largess on a short-sighted make-over--i.e., new street furnishings and building facades.

What will be the long-term value of streetscape improvement if basic problems are ignored? What condition would a prettified streetscape be in two or three years without thriving economic activity? Any effort that stresses a short-sighted spruce-up and ignores outside investment ought to be suspect.

Good planning would entice Sun Valley’s citizens to shop, hang out and spend money locally. A more interesting mix of retail and entertainment activities would require greater depth to the commercial frontage along Sunland Boulevard. A limited amount of rezoning would be needed to accommodate new commercial floor plans. Replacement housing could be imaginatively accommodated by constructing rental units above ground-floor shops.

Attempting to establish a distinctive civic identity anywhere in the vast, anonymous expanse of the San Fernando Valley is problematic at best. Should all storefronts in Sun Valley have a bland, uniform appearance? Or might a novel, expressive style better convey a distinctive identity? Artists can work with architects to conceive a new look for building facades.

So how to begin with things as they are on Sunland Boulevard? One glance at an existing produce store on the west side of the thoroughfare excites the imagination: A bright new pavilion for allotted retailing of eye-popping California produce could become a community focal point and present a colorful display to passing motorists. It could make for an attractive interpretation of Broadway’s Grand Central Market and draw tourists to the northeast Valley, perhaps with an adjacent courtyard for al fresco dining and entertainment. Collateral types of entertainment would reinforce and extend the daily hubbub into long evening hours.

What sort of process is being used to develop public consensus? The impersonal collecting of opinions by distributing questionnaires inherently limits the interest of citizens and their direct participation. Events open to anyone will generate more public participation. In the planning and design trades, these events are known as the environmental workshop, a creative process pioneered by designers James Burns and Lawrence Halprin. Such a workshop is a group exercise in which everyone is enticed to use drawings, models and other media, community inventories and market surveys, to prepare a realistic future scenario for a community’s environment.

Councilman Richard Alarcon and the participants in Sun Valley’s Neighborhood Initiative should resist doing an immediate quick fix while ignoring the long-term advantages of a more sophisticated analysis involving land-use planning.