SPECIAL REPORT * With proposals flying about LAX expansion, property owners along Century Boulevard explore ways to entice tourists and residents to stop for a while. They want visitors to . . . Stay and See ‘Gateway to L.A.’

Many out-of-towners catch their first and last glimpses of Los Angeles on the stretch of Century Boulevard between LAX and the San Diego Freeway. But they don’t often like what they see.

The boulevard offers few attractions as eight lanes of traffic zoom past 13 major hotels, fast food eateries, car rental agencies, cargo storage warehouses, office buildings with high vacancy rates and a pornography complex that features nude dancers.

“People fly into L.A. from all over the world and right now they are seeing a somewhat bleak environment. It’s not seen as a welcoming location,” said Peter Italiano, a real estate agent and property manager who is one of the leaders in a campaign to improve the area’s economic health and bolster its appeal to tourists and Southern California residents.

The hope is that new shops, restaurants, health clubs, movie theaters and conference facilities will be built there and that street and sidewalk improvements will encourage pedestrians to explore what is now a boulevard dominated by cars. After all, the 1.5-mile-long district has a built-in audience in its 7,200 hotel rooms, the densest concentration of hotels in Los Angeles County. Plus, millions of Southern Californians pass along it every year without stopping.

“We want to create an environment that people want to go to,” Italiano said.

He is the head of a city-approved business improvement district that calls itself “Gateway to L.A.” Property owners formed the organization two years ago, responding in part to plans to greatly expand Los Angeles International Airport and build new entry roads and airport-related mass transit projects in the area. The gateway district will soon begin to receive $175,000 a year from extra tax assessments to pay for such things as urban design consultants, new landscaping, marketing and additional security.

For a start, area business people and visitors say, a few new coffee shops would be nice, as would a unified system of hotel van shuttles to ease congestion and make hotel-hopping easier for conventioneers and airline flight crews who stay overnight.

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In an unusual collaboration with local businesses, architecture and planning students from three Los Angeles area colleges are brainstorming about the street. They are suggesting such intriguing, if expensive, ideas as adding flight observation decks to office buildings.

“Guests complain more than anything that there is a lack of things to do in the Century corridor,” said Hal Leonard, general manager of the 615-room Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Airport Hotel.

Visitors often wind up taking buses and taxis to shop and eat in nearby South Bay beach communities, especially the Manhattan Village mall in Manhattan Beach. Or they try to catch a horse race at Hollywood Park, about three miles east in Inglewood.

Some of the business conditions can clearly use improvements.

The 18 office buildings in the Century corridor west of the freeway last month averaged a 34% vacancy rate, double the county-wide average, according to a survey by the Realty Information Group. Average rents are about 25% below the county average.

Reflecting increased popularity nationwide in airport hotels, the LAX area hotels had an impressive 76.5% average occupancy rate late last year, compared to 74% countywide. But that was often achieved through discounting, analysts report. The average LAX room rented for $75 a night; the countywide figure was $96. Rates averaged $118 in Marina del Rey and $155 in Santa Monica.

“It’s perceived to not be the location of choice for a lot of commercial travelers,” said Bruce Baltin, a senior vice president for PKF Consulting, which conducted the hotel survey. Although many of the hotels offer fine meeting and dining facilities, the gateway district needs more restaurants and retail shops, he stressed.

The opportunity for change is linked to projections that LAX’s annual passenger traffic may grow over the next 20 years from 60 million to 93 million and that air cargo shipments would increase sharply.

Under study are controversial proposals to build a new passenger terminal on the airport’s western edge and new ring roads that might directly connect the San Diego and Century freeways to LAX without forcing cars to exit onto Century or Sepulveda boulevards. In addition, the Metro Rail Green Line might one day be extended into the area and connect to a smaller train into the terminals. All that may require the public acquisition and demolition of one or two hotels on the western end of Century, LAX officials said.

Those ideas face many tough financial and political hurdles, starting with the expected release of LAX environmental impact studies this summer. Still, the Century Boulevard property owners are lobbying to protect themselves. Their dilemma: A reduction in auto and, particularly, truck freight traffic may make the street more pleasant, but they fear that their district might be cut off from the main flow of commerce.

“The group wants to ensure that, first of all, Century Boulevard does not end up being a back door to the airport,” said Susan Perry, vice president of Kosmont and Associates, economic development consultants for the gateway business improvement district. The “happy medium,” she said, is between gridlock and a ghost town.

Jack Graham, chief of LAX planning, insisted that traffic on Century will stay about the same if all the proposed roads and train lines are built. The new projects would take only the expected additional traffic, he said.

He questioned whether there would be room along Century for substantial retail or entertainment facilities, especially because airport property on the boulevard’s south side is getting ready for a boom in cargo warehouse construction. The airport, he added, hopes to build “a very upscale” complex of shops and restaurants about a mile north of Century, next to the Westchester Golf Course.

The hotels and office towers, which are mainly on the north side of Century, are monitoring the design and landscaping of the cargo warehouses. “We just want to make sure that whatever is built isn’t lit up like a football field at night. That certainly would not enhance the hotel experience if you are across the street,” Perry said.

Many of the newer airports around the country do not have such a convenient and large hotel and office district. So preserving the neighborhood is important for the airport’s competitive health, said Ted Tanner, a vice president of Landrum & Brown, consultants on LAX’s master plan. The airport planners, he stressed, will coordinate efforts with the gateway group to improve the area.

At the invitation of the business improvement district, students and faculty from Southern California Institute of Architecture and Woodbury University last month displayed class projects that sought to take a more futuristic look. USC planning students are studying the district this semester, including such issues as what effect the 1993 opening of the Century Freeway has had.

Changes more dramatic than better landscaping and lighting must be considered, according to Lorcan O’Herlihy, an architecture professor at the institute. “If there ever was a city and place to think big, this is it,” he said.

For example, student Edwin Wu proposed a two-level superstructure along the boulevard, with cars on the ground and shops, pedestrians and a people-mover above. “I feel strongly that if you want a successful retail and commercial space, mixing pedestrian and automobile traffic is not going to work,” he said, noting the high speeds at which motorists are driving to catch planes. He offered no price tag for the steel, bridge-like construction.

Woodbury senior Judy Hutchinson designed models of flight observation decks, similar to large balconies, for the upper floors of an office building that now has trouble finding tenants. The astonishing views of low-flying airplanes en route to landing might attract restaurants and conferences, she said. “There are planes every five minutes, and I think something good should be made out of something constant,” she said. “It should be something more of an experience than an annoyance.”

Andrew Kimm, who founded the LAX One Hour Photo shop on Century Boulevard eight years ago, would be pleased with more modest improvements, such as new restaurants and safer street crossings and wider sidewalks. His is one of a handful of retail shops in the district. So when guests in nearby hotels ask his advice for spending a few hours in the neighborhood, he sometimes directs them to the Kmart store, about a mile north in Inglewood.

“This is a busy street for cars,” he said of Century Boulevard, “not for people.”

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A New Welcome Mat

“Gateway to L.A.” is a 1 1/2-mile business improvement district along Century Boulevard just outside LAX. Leaders hope to infuse new life into the area, which is best known forits 7,200 hotel rooms but has few amenities for travelers.