Mass Transit-Based Housing Project to Get on Track

Imagine living in a development that is within walking distance of a mass transit center, where you can drop off your child at a built-in day-care center before catching a comfortable commuter train to work.

Now imagine this development in Southern California, where car is king and freeways are the king’s crowded domain.

On Monday, President Clinton will visit the San Fernando Valley to launch construction of such a project in Sylmar--the largest mass transit-based housing development in Southern California.

Called Village Green, the project will offer 186 single-family homes to first-time buyers on a 26-acre site adjacent to the Metrolink train station. The homes will cost about $150,000, with financial aid available from the federal government.

The three- and four-bedroom homes will be arranged around a 25,000-square-foot park, according to the developers, Braemar Development and the Lee Group. The child-care center at the station is planned to accommodate as many as 45 children.

At the event, Clinton is also expected to announce a new initiative to help promote energy-efficient technologies, some of which will be used in the new homes, according to officials.

The homes, for example, will include energy-efficient washers and dryers, and refrigerators and air conditioners that don’t use chlorofluorocarbons, which are considered detrimental to the environment. The walls and windows will be specially designed to provide extra insulation.

But the main goal of the project is to link housing and transportation hubs in a way that encourages the use of mass transit.

“We feel it’s a concept that is on the right track,” said Peter Hidalgo, a Metrolink spokesman.

In addition to the convenient location, residents will be offered incentives--such as discounted monthly passes--to ride the 20 commuter trains that serve the station daily.

It is a concept that has been touted by planners across the country as the future of urban development. However, the idea has caught on much faster in other parts of the country, particularly in the Bay Area and in Seattle.

Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer who has written a book about urban transit centers, said Los Angeles is slightly behind on developing housing projects that are linked to transit centers.

“There is an automobile mentality in Los Angeles,” he said. “But there could be a snowball effect. All you need to build is a few of these before people recognize the possibility.”

Hidalgo said a similar transit-oriented project is in the works at the Simi Valley Metrolink station, and others are being considered for stations in Riverside, San Bernardino and Irvine.

Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) said he is glad the Sylmar project is also designed to provide housing for first-time buyers with moderate or low incomes.

“Unfortunately, you don’t see too much of that in California,” he said.