MCA Proposing $3-Billion Resort for Universal City : Growth: Entertainment conglomerate plans to double the size of its development, creating thousands of jobs. But neighboring homeowners fear effects.
MCA Inc. plans to double its development of Universal City over the next 25 years by adding $3 billion in new themed hotels, shops, restaurants, offices, concert halls and sound stages--creating the first destination resort in Los Angeles and a massive new home for its sprawling entertainment businesses.
The company, announcing its plans Wednesday, said the expansion will create 23,000 construction jobs building the new enterprises and add 14,000 permanent jobs at its 415-acre property overlooking the Cahuenga Pass during the next 2 1/2 decades.
Spokeswoman Christine Hanson said MCA intends to create a “family-oriented” resort surrounded by open space and lagoons that would generate $2 billion annually in new economic activity for the area and $75 million in tax revenue.
But, she added, “we’re not hoping for another Disneyland.”
The proposal to add up to 5.8 million square feet of facilities to the complex’s current 5.4 million, if the market will bear it, was presented in a news release. It offered few details of the expansion and no diagram or drawings to describe exactly what MCA envisions. But a giant theme-park complex like Disneyland--with increased noise, illumination and traffic--is precisely what neighboring homeowners fear most.
City and county elected officials, on the other hand, generally expressed satisfaction with the proposal, observing that the entertainment and tourism industries have surpassed aerospace as the region’s leading moneymaker. But they acknowledged that there are many regulatory and permit hurdles to clear along the way.
“The destination resort idea is attractive--it would be unique for the county and it wouldn’t harm the area,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who was briefed on the plan earlier in the week. “But I need to know how they plan to mitigate traffic impacts. This project will get a lot of scrutiny.”
About two-thirds of Universal City is on unincorporated county territory.
Universal City, which grew over the past 80 years on the site of a former chicken ranch, has had an uneasy relationship with its residential neighbors at times.
Homeowner groups have accused it of going about development in a piecemeal fashion--never presenting its view of the big picture and letting traffic pile up in neighborhood streets.
This time, Hanson said, MCA had already surveyed its neighbors, organized focus groups and planned in the future to reach out to the community for suggestions in the design process.
In this respect, Wednesday’s proposal met with applause from the community.
“They bit the bullet and came forward with their vision for the coming 25 years,” said Renee Weitzer, senior planning deputy for Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro. “Now in their EIR they have to prove they can mitigate (the undesirable effects of) what they plan to build.”
F. Michael Wester, president of the Cahuenga Pass Property Owners Assn., called the proposal “a good first step.” But he said that members of his group do not believe they have been adequately consulted yet and complained that MCA’s community advisory meetings are one-sided and result in “vague” responses to specific questions.
Polly Ward, vice president of the Studio City Residents Assn., pointed to her group’s experience in working closely with MCA in the development of the CityWalk mall. “We signed off on a Rodeo Drive-type project,” she said, “and got Las Vegas instead.”
Traffic, illumination and noise are the main issues of concern for the surrounding community.
* When the Universal Amphitheatre hosts a major event, Wester said, traffic backs up on Cahuenga Boulevard, Barham Boulevard and the Hollywood Freeway to such an extent that residents of the area have difficulty leaving their homes.
* Because Universal City is in a natural bowl, light from its evening attractions is reflected upward into the heavily populated surrounding hillsides. “My wife has a hard time getting to sleep at night because a light from one of their parking structures comes right through our bedroom window,” Wester said.
* Noise, too, ricochets off the surrounding hills. In a peculiar twist of geography, the cacophony focuses down on Toluca Lake, an upscale community well to the north of Universal City, Wester said.
As for MCA’s suggestion that the plan would benefit the area, Wester was not optimistic.
“The economic benefit will be a two-edged sword,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good to add to our job base if they ghettoize the community that surrounds them through inappropriate development.”
Still, the Universal City development does fit within the city’s General Plan. Public planning officials hope to move the region away from strip development--exemplified by Ventura Boulevard--in favor of the high-density development of centers such as Mid-Wilshire, Downtown, Hollywood and Warner Center.
“Concentrating more development in an area that is already highly developed makes a lot of sense,” said William Fulton, editor of the California Planning and Development Report, a highly regarded newsletter.
“The flip side, though, is transit. If you don’t link these areas well--and up to now these areas have not been well-linked--it can be a disaster.”
Fulton observed that the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Red Line subway will ultimately link the centers early in the next decade.
Tunneling for the Red Line linkup between Hollywood and Universal City is expected to begin late this year; work on the North Hollywood-Universal City tunnel began this week.
Fulton said that a debate is raging over whether the Universal City station should be located on Lankershim Boulevard--at the bottom of the complex’s hill, where patrons would have to make an arduous hike to its attractions--or conveniently near CityWalk on the MCA grounds.
“With this development proposal, it becomes doubly important for there to be direct access to the subway from the middle of Universal City,” Fulton said, suggesting that MCA foot the bill for such an extension.
Likewise, USC architecture professor Robert S. Harris said he would like to see Universal City become less isolated from the surrounding urban development.
“Now it’s like a shopping mall,” said Harris, the director of graduate studies at USC’s School of Architecture. “As they expand, I’d like to see them join the streets around them and create a richer urban fabric rather than a disconnected village. Unless we make places of density and organize communities around them, traffic is going to get worse and worse in Los Angeles.”
Financial analysts praised MCA’s proposal on Wednesday, saying it fits their view of the firm’s direction.
MCA is also expanding its Universal Studios Florida property in Orlando, for instance, adding a second theme park and five hotels. It is also planning a theme park in Japan.
Harrison Price, a Torrance-based attractions-industry consultant who has worked for MCA on various projects, predicted there would be plenty of room in the amusement market for the additional development planned at Universal City.
“I see no evidence of saturation,” he said, noting that the Universal City complex has gone from 600,000 visitors in 1966, when the studio tour opened, to more than 10 million last year at the combined attractions, which now include the Cineplex Odeon movie theaters and CityWalk in addition to the Universal Amphitheatre.
Steve Clark, president of Management Resources, a leisure-industry consulting firm in Tustin, said Universal City is an “ace property for MCA” and has no doubt that MCA can afford to build it. “I’m sure they’re confident that in that time frame they could easily handle that kind of investment,” he said.
MCA, built around Universal Studios, was one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the nation when it was purchased for $6.1 billion in 1990 by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., an Osaka, Japan-based consumer electronics company with $70 billion in annual sales.
Correspondent Jill Leovy contributed to this article.
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Universal City Plans
* Development Proposal: Over the next 25 years additional motion picture, television and music production facilities, along with shops, restaurants, theaters and hotels will be built by MCA.
* MCA founded: In 1924 as a booking agent for jazz bands. Bought out by Matsushita in 1990 for $6.1 billion.
* MCA holdings: Universal Pictures, theme parks, record labels, cable and television interests and theaters.
* Universal Studios: 415 acres. Along with a sister theme park in Florida, it is the second largest theme-park interest in the country.
