Housing Plan Offered for Retired Musicians

A county agency Wednesday advanced a plan by the group that stages the Grammy Awards to build a senior housing project for music-industry retirees in North Hollywood.

Encore Hall, proposed for a site across from the subway station on Lankershim Boulevard, would have six stories of apartment units, with the ground floor reserved mostly for retail shops.

“This will provide a place where seniors from the music industry can come together in an innovative and unique setting that will have music rooms and an auditorium,” said Adam Sandler, a spokesman for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

The project would cost more than $20 million and be developed jointly by the academy’s charitable wing, MusiCares, and a private, for-profit developer, Emeritus Assisted Living.

More than half of the 160 apartments would be reserved for music-industry retirees, who would receive assisted living services and subsidized rent.

Sandler noted that the site is near the El Portal Center for the Arts, where music programs can be staged.

The academy has been criticized for spending a fraction of the charitable funds it raises on one of its primary charitable functions: helping needy and ailing musicians. The Times reported in 1998 that MusiCares spent only about 10 cents of every donated dollar on such services, but banked hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for undisclosed purposes.

After those reports, the academy announced plans to finance the construction of Encore Hall with those funds, among others.

A committee of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which owns the site, sent the academy’s proposal to the MTA board without a yea or nay recommendation Wednesday.

Jaime de la Vega, assistant deputy mayor, introduced the motion at a meeting of the MTA’s Construction Committee, calling for fast-track talks with the academy, which faces a June 30 deadline to secure a site or risk losing state and local government funding.

De la Vega said the project is important because it is the first development proposal for the MTA’s vast holdings around its soon-to-open subway station.

“The purpose here is, we need to get development around the rail station accelerated,” he said.

But members of a citizens panel set up to advise the redevelopment agency questioned Wednesday whether affordable housing for senior citizens is the best use of prime real estate within walking distance of a multibillion-dollar transit system.

North Hollywood attorney Glenn Hoiby, who heads the Project Area Committee, said the area already has housing for seniors nearby but is in greater need of businesses with high-paying jobs.

“The question is whether or not this is . . . the best use of the property,” Hoiby said.

Victor Viereck, an accountant and member of the Project Area Committee, had the same concern.

“I think that’s one of the least uses for it. We need something viable that will create jobs in there,” Viereck said.

Lorretta Dash, president of the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said: “It would not be my first choice for a project there.”

Times staff writer Michael A. Hiltzik contributed to this story.