Smaller NoHo Project Planned Near Subway

For a second time, a proposed commercial and residential development near the North Hollywood subway station has been greatly scaled back, and the new builder must decide between a large office component and hundreds of apartments.

The problem-plagued NoHo Commons project is seen by city officials as the cornerstone development for revitalizing a blighted area of North Hollywood south and east of the Red Line station.

Developer J. Allen Radford, in original plans three years ago, proposed a $1-billion, 4-million-square-foot project to include film sound stages and a hotel; he reduced it last year to 1.8 million square feet, dropping the sound stages and hotel, before bringing in a new controlling partner, Jerry Snyder.

Snyder’s newly revised, $160-million plan, to be presented to residents in a public hearing tonight, further scales back the project to 1.2 million square feet of apartments, retail shops, a community health clinic and a one-stop employment center.

Snyder said the project was revised after the Los Angeles Unified School District proposed building a high school on 10 acres originally slated for development.

Although the new project drops a multiscreen movie theater and film school that Radford once proposed, Snyder said the new complex will make a big difference to a blighted area of North Hollywood.

“Our project is true redevelopment for an area that needs to be redeveloped,” Snyder said.

Perhaps equally important, the new project is more likely to get built than Radford’s original plan, officials said.

“It’s a doable project and it will have a positive impact on North Hollywood,” said Lillian Burkenheim, project manager for the Community Redevelopment Agency.

For residents and business leaders who have seen development proposals fall apart, disappointment over the scaling back of the project is tempered by the desire to see something, anything, done.

“I will be happy at this point if something happens,” said Loretta Dash, past president of the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Although redevelopment opponents fought the agency in recent years, Dash said the market that might have supported the original Radford plan has changed, noting that other movie theaters have been built nearby.

Victor Viereck of the North Hollywood Residents Assn. said he is eager to see the presentation on the new project.

“It should have been done a long time ago,” he said of the development.

Burkenheim confirmed that some elements of the original project are no longer supported by the market. She also confirmed that the 10-acre parcel being considered by Los Angeles Unified for a new high school was a major factor in eliminating the office high-rises originally proposed.

The remaining 28-acre project will include one site that could be developed either with 464 apartments or as much as 600,000 square feet of offices, she said.

Snyder said the plan for the site currently calls for apartments, but that he is in talks with a major bank to build an office complex that could take their place of those apartments.

“We don’t have room for both,” Burkenheim said, noting that the original plan called for both.

The rest of the project includes 57 apartments where people can live and work in the same space, 242 artists lofts above a supermarket, 90,000 square feet of street-level retail space, 200,000 square feet of offices, and a 20,000-square-foot community health clinic.

Architectural drawings to be presented at tonight’s meeting show a flashy shopping district that would include a bookstore and other draws for young professionals. One advantage of the smaller project is that it could be built in three to five years; the original development would have taken 10 years to complete, Burkenheim said.

Negotiations on financing are continuing between Snyder and the agency, and Burkenheim said she hopes an agreement can be struck by the end of September so construction could begin in February or March.

That timeline is compatible with the Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s plans to act on five development proposals for adjacent MTA property. Those proposals include a mix of commercial and residential construction, and one, submitted by Snyder, includes a hotel, he said.

The Community Redevelopment Agency project proposes at least $22 million in federal, state and local subsidies, much of it to widen streets serving the development.

One prerequisite for the development to go forward is agency approval of a relocation plan for the 27 apartment tenants and 62 businesses on the 28-acre site.

The $5-million relocation plan will be presented to the public at tonight’s meeting, which begins at 6 at the Academy Conference Center, 5210 Lankershim Blvd.