From Drawing Board to Planning Board : Valley Projects Gone Awry

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

--Daniel Burnham

Architect and planner who designed the stately White City on the shores of Lake Michigan for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

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By its very nature, urban planning is a speculative art, based on assumptions, models and a good bit of luck. At their best, planners and developers can create streetscapes that inspire the soul. At their worst, they give birth to tacky commercial strips clogged with traffic.

Usually, their visions fall somewhere in the middle--if they happen at all.

As one of America’s first large-scale modern suburbs, the San Fernando Valley was one of the first urban places to be planned from the ground up. But visions of the future do not always come to pass. Reality gets in the way and changing tastes and ideas about the urban environment alter projects as they move between drawing boards and groundbreakings.

Here are a few visions that either changed or have yet to come to pass.

Universal City

* Entertainment beginnings: The vision for the future of Universal Studios was a collection of isolated skyscrapers in the fashion of Century City office complexes.

* Redrawn plans: A few of the towers were built, including two hotels and two office buildings. But over time, MCA officials thought the plan too sterile. Plans were redrawn to include low-profile offices and shops instead of skyscrapers. The first phase of that plan, CityWalk, opened three years ago to phenomenal success.

Scene of the Crime

* From bookshop to office building: The once-bustling block of Ventura Boulevard east of Woodman Avenue housed the Scene of the Crime bookshop. Shops along the block were emptied beginning in 1988 when a developer envisioned a three-story, 85,000-square-foot office building on the site.

* Scaled-back plans: Neighbors hated the plan and enlisted the aid of city officials to block demolition permits. The developer sued, was rebuffed and then sued again. In the meantime, the project was scaled back to 11,000 square feet of retail and 144 apartments for seniors.

* Still an empty lot: Now, the plan is to refurbish the weed-choked block and reopen the shops.

Monorail

* Subway substitute: The decision last year to extend the underground Red Line to the San Diego Freeway effectively killed plans to build an elevated monorail along the southern fringe of the Valley. Instead, a below-grade rail line will run roughly along Chandler Boulevard between Universal City and Van Nuys.

* Monorail failures:

High-speed magnetic levitation train--Rail line linking Palmdale and LAX has gone nowhere.

Monorail--A 6.5-mile monorail between Universal City and downtown Burbank will not be built any time soon.

Light-rail--Rail line will link Burbank Airport to Downtown Los Angeles. Project’s funding is uncertain.

Lake Hayvenhurst

* Giant hole: A developer planned to build a 377,000-square-foot building with six movie theaters on the site Encino residents derisively refer to as “Lake Hayvenhurst.”

* Project scaled back: Fearing traffic, neighbors forced the developer to shrink the project by 40,000 square feet. By that time, however, the developer could not get financing and scaled the project back even further. In 1992 the developer went bankrupt.

* Marketplace: A new developer approached the community with plans for a market, and late in 1994 a Spanish-style complex of shops called Encino Marketplace opened on the site.

Researched by AARON CURTISS / Los Angeles Times