Van Nuys Sets the Scene for Valley’s Millennium Party

The San Fernando Valley is in for the party of the century on Dec. 31, according to Mayor Richard Riordan.

The family-oriented, free festival is expected to attract 100,000 to Van Nuys Airport, where city officials promised kids’ programs, bands and other entertainment before a spectacular fireworks and laser show at midnight, marking the start of the year 2000.

“It’s going to be a very, very exciting night,” Riordan promised a group of 30 Valley civic leaders at a breakfast to unveil the program.

The mayor said the Valley festival, and four similar celebrations proposed in other parts of the city, will be an event that residents will talk about for years to come and will bring the city together as a new century starts.

“I think you are going to put on the best celebration in all of Los Angeles,” Riordan told the Valley leaders.

The San Fernando Valley Spectacular, as it is being called, will run from noon on Dec. 31 to 1 a.m. on Jan. 1 in an area of the airport used in the past for the Valley’s annual air show. It will accommodate about 25,000 people at any given time throughout the day, said Al Nodal, who heads the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. Nodal said about 25,000 people are expected to be present at midnight.

Entertainment announced Tuesday for the Valley celebration included the bands Tierra, Indigo Swing, Canned Heat, Alabina and a spoken word performance by the group Watts Prophets.

Nodal said other headlining acts will be announced later.

City officials will announce sometime after Thanksgiving how residents can obtain free tickets to the event. Local libraries and supermarkets will probably be named as locations for tickets, Nodal said.

A parade of 2,000 line dancers will perform, Nodal said. The festival will include free games and crafts for children and a 9 p.m. millennium show targeted to kids who have early bedtimes.

Throughout the day, a sky parade of civilian and military aircraft will fly overhead. There will be skywriters and parachutists. “We want to animate the sky over Los Angeles,” Nodal said.

Every hour, a different country represented in the Valley’s population will be the focus of entertainment.

The Van Nuys celebration will be linked by giant television screens to festivals to be held on Alameda Street, Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw, Grand Avenue and San Pedro.

“If you are in Van Nuys, you will see what is happening in San Pedro. You will be able to party with people from Crenshaw,” Nodal said. “We hope that this celebration will do what the 1984 Olympics did, tie us all together as one city.”

The reaction from Valley civic leaders who met with Riordan was generally enthusiastic.

“It’s great,” said Lee Kanon Alpert from the North San Fernando Valley Community Foundation. “It’s going to bring a lot of neighborhoods together, and it’s not going to be like Las Vegas where you have to be a millionaire to participate.”

But some residents, including Don Schultz of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., sought assurances from Riordan and Nodal that there would be adequate security and that measures would be taken to minimize traffic and parking problems in neighborhoods near the venue.

“I’m hoping that the people organizing this will protect neighborhoods,” Schultz told the mayor.

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Nodal said the event will be inside a fence and will be alcohol-free. Shuttle buses will run from satellite parking.

Riordan was asked about what he thought the event might do for the city given the threat by the Valley to secede.

He said the city’s quick recovery from the Northridge earthquake showed that Los Angeles can do great things “and we will do it as one city.”

“Hopefully, this will get Angelenos to think in terms of one city,” Riordan said.

“It will also wake up the 15 Rip van Winkles in City Hall to look at it that way,” he joked, referring to the City Council. “We all love the Valley and we really want you to stay with us.”