Some Valley Businesses Prefer the Cachet of ‘L.A.’

With the whir of Hollywood Freeway traffic in the background, Lenny Sage sat in his office last week and pondered his geographic identity crisis.

The Sage family calls its car dealership Universal City Nissan. But some would argue that it is not really in Universal City, though it’s just across the freeway from Universal Studios. And it’s not in Studio City, though many people think it is, Sage said.

The dealership--a fixture for nearly three decades on Cahuenga Boulevard West (a street sometimes mistaken for Ventura Boulevard)--is in an area that neighborhood groups and street signs call Cahuenga Pass.

That name is recognized by Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area. But the city Planning Department does not identify Cahuenga Pass as a separate neighborhood on its community plan map.

Adding to the confusion, most of the shops along Cahuenga West, roughly between Lankershim Boulevard and Mulholland Drive, hand out business cards listing the locale as Los Angeles. It is perhaps the only area of the San Fernando Valley to do so.

“This area has sort of an identification crisis,” Sage said. “People call it so many different things.”

The area’s ambiguous nomenclature might be solved if those seeking to create a new Valley city have their way, but the resolution might not be to everyone’s liking.

After getting enough signatures to force a study of secession, those pushing for a Valley city will soon submit proposed boundaries that, as currently drawn, include the slim swath of land along the freeway that stretches down to Mulholland Drive, and portions of the Hollywood Hills.

For some businesses in the area, seeking to escape years of frustration in dealing with a City Hall bureaucracy they find cumbersome and inaccessible, that’s just fine.

For others, including a number of entertainment-related firms, losing an L.A. address would mean a loss of cachet they say could cost them business in the long run.

“I think the perception would change,” said jazz singer cum art supplies dealer Murray Ross, who for 30 years has run World Supply on Cahuenga Boulevard West with his wife, Geri. “I think it would localize me; people would think of us as only serving the Valley.

“And that would be awful, the psychological impact,” added Murray. “We sell to everyone in the world and we want to be at the center of activity, and that’s L.A.”

Echoing that refrain was John Moyer, a sales manager at nearby Disc Makers, which manufactures CDs and cassettes for independent bands and record labels.

Noting the importance of location in the image-conscious entertainment business, Moyer said, “If it doesn’t say L.A., it might not be clear that we’re in the center of what’s going on. We would definitely feel a financial hit from that.

“We might just call ourselves L.A. anyway,” he said.

That approach wouldn’t be unprecedented, since any number of Valley-based entertainment firms, most notably Universal Studios, don Hollywood monikers.

There’s no need to change the stationery yet. We’re most likely at least three years away from a vote on Valley secession, which would have to be approved by a majority in both the Valley and the city as a whole.

And the ultimate arbiter of the boundaries of any new Valley city would be the Local Agency Formation Commission, a nine-member panel that has wide latitude to take into account the wishes of residents and business owners in affected areas.

“The commission listens to people and it’s not unusual for the commission to make changes in the boundaries that are different than the boundaries filed in the application,” said Larry Calemine, LAFCO’s executive director.

“It’s not unusual for the commission to redraw the boundaries to leave . . . people out, unless it created an island,” he said.

Indeed, officials with Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, which has pushed for the secession study, say they have no desire to hijack unwilling neighborhoods. They say they already have heeded the wishes of some--but not all--borderline residents who wanted to opt out.

“If some of these people got notification of what’s going on, they should be able to argue for or against inclusion,” said attorney Bob Scott, who serves on the Valley VOTE local governance committee.

“We don’t want to haul someone unwillingly into the Valley.”

*

Universal City Nissan owner Morrie Sage and his youngest son, Lenny, have always thought of theirs as a Valley-based business, even though firms directly across the street from the nearly 30-year-old dealership, and farther south along Cahuenga West, use a Los Angeles address and have a 323 area code.

Most of the Valley sports an 818 area code, as does Universal Nissan.

At $130 million in annual sales and 220 employees, the dealership ranks as one of the largest employers in the area.

From the standpoint of sales, Lenny Sage said he does not anticipate much impact on his business, regardless of which city he ultimately lands in.

He said he’s reserving final judgment until the results of the now-mandated study of Valley cityhood are in. But at first blush, he thinks a Valley city might be an antidote for what he sees as a bloated and frustrating bureaucracy downtown.

“The L.A. city business tax is absurd right now, and it’s been absurd for years,” said Sage, referring to the 1930s-era tax code that Mayor Richard Riordan is now attempting to overhaul.

“One of the benefits of possibly going into the Valley is that we may see a bigger return on our $180,000 tax bill.

“I have a lot more confidence about sending a $180,000 payment to a new Valley municipality, more confidence that I’ll get value out of it,” he said.

He also noted that five years ago, when the dealership wanted to expand, the city originally had imposed a so-called “trip tax” of $300,000 to help mitigate increased traffic in the area.

“We ended up arguing it down substantially, but those are the kinds of things that would benefit us” by switching municipalities, he said.

“Those are the kinds of things that we’ve been increasingly frustrated with over the past 10 to 15 years. And I suspect those are some of the frustrations that precipitated the secession concepts.”

Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo, who oversees economic development, noted that the Valley already has received increased services and argued that businesses anticipating a lessened tax bite in a new Valley city might be unpleasantly surprised.

“I think it’s probably not accurate to think that the tax burden would go down for a smaller city,” said Delgadillo. “The new city would not have the infrastructure in place that L.A. already has. Something new would have to be created; a public works department [for example] would have to be created.”

Like many of the business owners, Delgadillo came back to the question of image as being one of the most salient and salable qualities of Los Angeles.

“As the economy becomes more global, the headquarters of your business becomes important for more than just having your people together,” said Delgadillo. “Your headquarters becomes important for image. L.A. provides [businesses] with a very significant and cutting-edge image.”

Though that visage is important to a large number of the firms along Cahuenga West that rely on the entertainment industry for a substantial portion of their business, the concern about community is not universal.

Some companies, like Panasonic Broadcasting and Digital Systems, which last fall moved its headquarters from New Jersey to Cahuenga West, are taking a wait-and-see attitude, noting that the feasibility study might yield interesting results.

Others, mainly service providers like hair replacement specialist Edward Katz, don’t anticipate much impact, regardless of civic designation.

“People come here because of the quality of the work that we do,” said Katz, adding that he serves clients from 14 countries. “So it’s insignificant where we’re located.”

*

Valley@Work runs each Tuesday. Karen Robinson-Jacobs can be reached at Karen.Robinson@latimes.com.