Beautifying the Boulevard

If Ventura Boulevard has an unofficial cheerleader, it is Claudia Wells.

The owner of Armani Wells, a clothing store near the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards, she wiles away her mornings sipping cafe latte outside her shop, chatting with other shopkeepers, hugging friends and smiling at passersby. On a recent sun-soaked morning, her face was a portrait of satisfaction in her surroundings.

“It’s like the ‘50s here,” Wells said. “Everybody knows each other and comes by and hangs out. Even though the boulevard has gotten busy, there’s still a real sense of community.”

For a lot of people, Ventura Boulevard is more than a 17-mile street packed with Starbucks and McDonald’s. It’s the Nile of the San Fernando Valley, bringing life to communities and creating a fertile strip of businesses along its course.

But rapid growth has made the boulevard ugly, say Los Angeles city planners who once again are trying to combat congestion and sprawl. The Los Angeles City Council will soon consider a sweeping proposal to phase out strip malls and replace them with pedestrian-friendly areas, knock down derelict billboards and spruce up the concrete monotony with palms and shrubs.

“We’re trying to identify for the San Fernando Valley a real main street, something that every community needs,” said Gordon Hamilton, deputy director of the city’s Planning Department.

Some residents are skeptical that the city’s plan will work. Planning has yet to help rein in sprawl, they say. But more than that, many generally like the boulevard just the way it is.

“The boulevard is a great place to walk,” said Tai Siri, as he lugged a bag of bananas and other groceries back to his home in Studio City after stopping at a cafe. “It’s friendly, there’s a lot to see and it feels really safe.”

To be sure, there’s no one opinion.

Several residents interviewed on the street in Studio City, for example, seemed charmed by their environs. Yet across the Valley in Tarzana, others voiced concern that development is swallowing the “feel” of the neighborhood. Signs are a hot issue everywhere, and there’s a divide, too, between the business owners who put up signs and the residents who have to look at them.

The boulevard proposal, if passed this summer, will deal signs a crushing blow. New billboards will be banned and any billboard canvas left empty for more than six months will be destroyed. The plan would also reduce the number of smaller signs.

The focus on signs is hardly new. For years, council members have threatened to ban new billboards along Ventura Boulevard. Right now, 247 billboards dot the boulevard from Studio City to Woodland Hills.

Ventura Boulevard changes a lot as you move from east to west. Studio City, the most pedestrian-friendly stretch, has so many outdoor cafes and coffee shops that on a sunny day with lots of people strolling about there is a hint--or maybe it’s just wishful thinking--of Paris in the air.

Often, Ruth Klein and her husband, David, drive in from Silver Lake to window shop along the boulevard in Studio City. They usually bring Lucy, a basset hound with the pinkest, sleepiest eyes in the world. The Kleins’ only complaint about Ventura Boulevard is that not enough sidewalk cafes let them eat with their dog.

“I guess this isn’t Paris,” Ruth Klein said, “because over there you can take your dog anywhere.”

The next community on the boulevard, Sherman Oaks, is famous for shopping--even though the Galleria mall, home of the Valley Girl, is being turned into an office building. But as Ventura Boulevard flows west, it loses its charms. Signs grow as thick as a forest. On one block in Tarzana, baseball cards, bowling, beds and brass are advertised within 50 feet of custom blinds, Italian food and snowboards. In Woodland Hills, the road widens to as many as six lanes and the boulevard becomes a regional corridor, the fastest way to get west.

People don’t walk around there as much. They drive. And storefronts give way to strip malls, perfect for autos, not for people. Such development is passe, say planners. Helen Itria Norman, president of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn., said Tarzana’s business district along Ventura Boulevard needs to be cleaned up, with signs made more uniform.

“When the business district starts looking tacky,” Norman said, “you get tacky businesses,” referring to the handful of sex shops and the one tattoo parlor in Tarzana.

Norman is also among Tarzana property owners concerned about the area’s heavy traffic. Since the Valley growth spurt after World War II, Ventura Boulevard has been a hodgepodge of businesses connected by car. Few residents are holding their breath for Ventura Boulevard to become the next Third Street Promenade, the family-oriented pedestrian mall in Santa Monica.

“There’s not a lot of walking here, but that’s not why I come to [Ventura Boulevard],” said Lisa Nathan, of Woodland Hills. “It’s the best place for a lot of shops, a lot of variety, and yeah, maybe there’s traffic, but there’s traffic no matter where you go in California.” Under the current proposal, planners hope to decrease traffic by creating pedestrian zones along the boulevard.

Pedestrian zones would bar new car-oriented businesses, such as drive-thru restaurants, auto repair shops and park-in-front strip malls. Bistros, bakeries and bookstores--places you could walk to--would be encouraged.

The rules won’t affect existing businesses but would be enforced on new projects through the building permit process. The idea is to cluster retail development and build central parking garages so people can walk instead of drive from shop to shop.

This plan, like others before it, has its own lofty vision. But boulevard history is littered with bold ideas that never materialized.

Two years ago, business leaders in Tarzana hatched an idea, yet to be executed, of replacing park benches with theme park-like boulders and animals to sit on. They wanted to tap into the community’s heritage as the home of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In 1993, residents in Woodland Hills proposed building a 12-foot-tall statue of a Little League pitcher near the intersection of Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards. Six years later, few remember the idea.

Claudia Wells, the Studio City shopkeeper, doesn’t think far-out plans are really needed. Sure, she would like to see more trees, fewer signs and little white lights along the boulevard, like the ones in Beverly Hills, to encourage people to shop at night.

“But overall, we have a real nice atmosphere here,” she said. “And to tell you the truth, I stick to my own few blocks.” The city Planning Department will hold public hearings May 12 at the Encino Community Center, 4935 Balboa Blvd., Encino, and May 13 at CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City. The council is expected to vote on the proposal this summer.

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Proposed Changes

(covers all five communities)

* Creation of pedestrian areas to encourage more outdoor cafes and fewer malls. New auto repair shops, drive-thrus and other non-retail businesses would not be allowed in pedestrian zones (existing businesses would not be affected).

* Centrally located parking lots for shoppers to walk, not drive, from business to business.

* No new billboards and stricter rules on the size, number and placement of signs.

* Streetscape plans to plant more trees, with a specific type of tree for each area.

* Tighter design guidelines covering the look and size of new businesses.