The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

OK, maybe a DreamWorks SKG studio in North Hollywood is pie in the sky. But we can dream, can’t we? Dreams are just what North Hollywood needs if it is to transform itself from run-down neighborhood to vital hub of the entertainment industry.

Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro and Councilman Joel Wachs are the dreamers in this case. The two are courting DreamWorks despite the entertainment company’s coolness to the idea of building a new studio from the ground up in North Hollywood or anywhere else. The company just scrapped plans to build a studio in Playa Vista, saying it didn’t make sense financially.

That hasn’t stopped Burbank and Glendale from trying to change DreamWorks executives’ minds, and it shouldn’t stop the city of Los Angeles either. And if a whole new studio doesn’t fly, there’s still the possibility of enticing DreamWorks to lease space in a studio and commercial complex being built in the heart of the NoHo arts district by developer J. Allen Radford, with help from the Community Redevelopment Agency. Radford, a dreamer himself, has already contacted DreamWorks.

The complex will be built across from a new Metro Red Line subway station set to open next spring, giving workers and neighborhood residents a quick and easy ride to Hollywood and downtown and boosting North Hollywood’s prospects for revitalization. What’s not to like?

Even if DreamWorks proves resistant to these enticements and stays in its established bases in Glendale, Universal City and Beverly Hills, the North Hollywood pitch won’t be wasted. The effort itself might stimulate ideas for attracting other companies to take advantage of the North Hollywood location--and the federal grants and loans available due to its redevelopment status. Most of all, it will get the city’s movers and shakers in the habit of thinking about North Hollywood’s potential--and that of the rest of the San Fernando Valley.

The North Hollywood Redevelopment Plan has plenty of naysayers who think the new Metro Rail subway won’t change anything, that the neighborhood, instead of being revitalized, will continue its steady decline. And it’s true; the subway alone won’t do it. Success requires plans, big plans, for entertainment, commercial, residential and pedestrian-oriented development. This is the alternative vision--which is, after all, another word for dream.