Hospitality Link

In the moments before dawn, commuters in business attire hurry from the darkness of the parking lot toward the cream-colored train depot at the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley.

The wheels of the 6:18 Metrolink that began to turn in Oxnard are now rolling through the tunnels of the Santa Susana Mountains, minutes away from the Chatsworth station.

Until two years ago, there wasn’t much more than an open-air platform. But now, commuters sit at tables. Some read the newspaper.

At the newly opened Whistle Stop Coffee Depot in the 5,000-square-foot building, the two friendly sisters who run the place dispense schedule information along with hot drinks.

“Do you want some sugar with that, hon?” asks Phyllis Barber, 49, who tends to her customers with motherly care.

“That train doesn’t go all the way to Oxnard, sweetie,” she advises another.

The construction of a Western-style depot is part of an effort to turn local train stations into commuter-friendly business centers that transportation officials hope will help boost rail commuting.

The Chatsworth station includes a child care facility and is slowly growing into a community center.

The Transit Tots West child care center enrolls 30 children, including five belonging to parents who ride Metrolink trains, said Michele LeGrand, the facility’s director.

“I drop off my son. I buy a cup of coffee, sit at a table and get on the train,” said Mark Bondurant, 40, who brings 13-month-old Benjamin to the center each morning before traveling to Burbank, where he works writing computer software. “And now I have all these friends on the train.”

Parents who use the train or another shared form of transportation are eligible for a $100 monthly rebate on the center’s fees, which can run from $100 to $130 a week, depending on the child’s age. The center is open from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

In another part of the building, a large lobby in front of the Whistle Stop is furnished with tables and wooden benches.

A painting of the rocky peaks west of Chatsworth adorns one wall. Old tools, such as a rusted nail puller, hang from the walls.

Work continues on a bicycle shop scheduled to open May 21, in time for California Bike Commute Day.

“The hope is that this town center will become a seven-days-a-week focal point for the community,” said Francine Oschin, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, who helped broker the purchase of the land.

That is precisely the sort of development envisioned by officials and community members when the 13-acre plot next to the tracks was purchased from Southern Pacific Railroad in 1990.

“What you see in Chatsworth is an early example of how we hope things will be,” said Peter Hidalgo, a Metrolink spokesman.

Since its formation five years ago, he said, the agency has urged such development at the 46 stations that the rail service uses in six Southern California counties.

Chatsworth’s efforts follow a few other train stops that have developed similar environments, including Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, San Juan Capistrano and Claremont. Other communities considering such developments include Irvine and Burbank.

The building was constructed in an Old West style to reflect the site’s history as a stagecoach stop in the 19th century and the place where Roy Rogers and Dale Evans filmed many TV shows.

Tenants are still needed for an 800-square-foot space next to the bike shop and another small space opposite the coffee bar.

There are also plans for businesses such as cleaners, a market, bank--or at least an ATM--or even a post office.

One recent morning at the station, Barber and her sister Jackie Baughman, 37, greeted the regulars at their coffee shop, many of them by name. Baughman hustled out to arriving trains to deliver the breakfast orders that conductors and passengers call in, using their cellular phones as the trains near the station.

“They do a great job,” Kathy Colquitt, a Woodland Hills resident dropping by the station, said of the sisters. “They’ll yell at people, ‘Hey, who left this?’ They’re always happy.”