Many Are Stationing Themselves Near Depots

Robert Sayegh is a car-owning Angeleno who rarely drives.

The 36-year-old jewelry maker, who lives upstairs from Metro Red Line’s Hollywood and Western station, commutes by subway to his downtown job. With so many shops near his home, running errands is often just a stroll across the street. He almost never uses his car on weekdays anymore.

“Everything you need, you have it all around,” said Sayegh, spreading his arms as if bear-hugging his apartment complex, which opened about a year ago. “The only reason I live in Hollywood is because of the subway.”

Tired of the hassles of driving or drawn to a more urban lifestyle, people like Sayegh are helping fuel a housing boom near transit stations in Southern California and across the nation. In Los Angeles County, more than $4 billion worth of new projects near subway or light-rail stations have either opened this year or are underway. The projects are expected to add more than 6,000 residential units over the next four years, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Some development is spurred in part by public subsidies and new zoning rules that allow greater density near subway or train stops. But shifting demographics are also propelling the trend, experts say.

Over the next two decades, urban areas across the nation will have swelling ranks of seniors who don’t drive, low-income immigrants without cars and childless singles and couples who prefer smaller housing near nightlife, according to a recent nationwide study by the Oakland-based Center for Transit-Oriented Development.

“For many Americans, the good life means not having to drive a car to work,” said Jenna Dorn, chief of the Federal Transit Administration, which sponsored the study. “Their vision of the American dream does not involve a car in the suburbs.”

The study identifies five metropolitan areas -- Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago -- as the hottest markets for transit-oriented housing in the next 20 years. In Los Angeles, the demand for such housing is expected to increase fourfold.

Transit villages are being built or planned in Pasadena, Long Beach, downtown Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Covina and Hollywood.

The pocket of East Hollywood where Sayegh lives -- home to many Armenian, Russian and Thai immigrants -- is often cited as a leading example of how transit-centered development can change a community.

“The neighborhood still has a kind of edge, but now it has more positive things than negative,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “They’re revitalizing the area.”

For years, the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue was crumbling. A burned-out hull of a hotel stood on one corner. Tenement-like apartments occupied another. Drug dealers, transients and prostitutes reigned over the street life.

“It was pretty wild and woolly for a long time,” recalled resident Phil Carden, 52.

After the subway opened there in June 1999, the colorful checker-tiled portal seemed to breathe new life into the area.

Soon, an immaculate 60-unit apartment complex, painted in shades of yellow and beige, sprouted up on the same block as the station, replacing the decrepit housing. Across the boulevard, the hotel was replaced by a shopping complex with a Ralphs supermarket, a Starbucks and a Ross Dress for Less.

Above the shopping center, a 100-unit senior housing complex that opened last October now has a waiting list of nearly 1,000.

Sayegh’s building -- a whimsical four-story concoction with a facade of colorful rectangles and squares reminiscent of a Mondrian painting -- opened in December on top of the station. Low-income families in the largest apartments pay up to $969 a month for a four-bedroom unit, and in return the developer receives federal tax credits. The building is filled and has an unusually long waiting list of 2,000 applicants.

The new residents at Hollywood and Western say they like having the subway stop close by -- even if they don’t always use it. Car ownership rates, however, remain high. All 45 spaces in the building’s underground garage are filled. Residents with more than one car circle streets in the area to find parking.

But studies show that transit-adjacent residents like Sayegh tend to drive less.

Nationally, the average metropolitan household owns 1.6 cars; a household near a transit station averages 0.9 cars, according to the federal study. A separate recent survey, funded by the California Department of Transportation, found that residents near rail stations are five times more likely to commute by transit than the community average, according to report coauthor Richard Willson, chairman of Cal Poly Pomona’s department of urban and regional planning.

Sayegh’s neighbor, Mey Deepratheep doesn’t commute by transit even though she works near another Red Line stop. The 44-year-old restaurant server said her shift often ends late, after the trains stop running for the night.

Still, she likes living close to transit, she said. Her 66-year-old mother, who lives with her, speaks only Thai and can’t drive. She takes buses and trains to shop and visit friends.

But some in the neighborhood choose not to own a car.

“It’s more trouble than it’s worth. It’s not worth the gas and the risks and the insurance that you pay,” said Heidi Calvert, teetering with several bags of groceries as she walked down Hollywood Boulevard from the nearby Ralphs. When she needs to leave the area, she uses public transit or calls a cab.

“It’s just like New York,” said the blue-haired 32-year-old, who used to live in the Big Apple.

Calvert, a photographer and property manager, lives upstairs from her office at the Gershwin Hotel, about a block from the subway. She recently opened an art gallery on the same street because she felt encouraged by the area’s improvements.

Her co-worker, former Studio City resident Lenora Claire, said she can’t imagine returning to the suburbs anytime soon.

“It’s a nice place to raise a family, but I’m a young person. I don’t need a yard for pushing a kid on a swing,” said the 24-year-old clerk, smoothing back her candy-apple red tresses. She sees no need for a car. “Here, I can go to clubs. I can go to bars. Two subway stops ... to the Beauty Bar, the Burgundy Room. It’s really easy!”

Even with the subway as a catalyst, the development at Hollywood and Western took financial props. For example, Sayegh’s building leases MTA-owned land at a somewhat below top market rate and about one-third of the project’s $14.3-million cost was financed through subsidies and loans from such sources as the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. Across the street, the Ross and Ralphs stores each got $250,000 grants that required them to remain for 10 years.

Officials and developers point to neighborhood changes as evidence the money was well spent. And they say that construction near transit stations is more complicated and costly because of the need to work around tunnels and tracks. Buildings sometimes require extra soundproofing and special engineering to prevent vibrations.

But others criticize the use of public money. “All of those projects are rip-offs of government funds. A private developer should be taking the risks, not the city, not a transit agency,” said Jerry Schneiderman, a real estate developer and former president of the Hollywood Boulevard Property Owners Assn. “We need places for low-income people to live, but why are we spending that kind of money when you can fix up existing buildings for less?”

In addition, some longtime residents say that the relaxed zoning and parking requirements have led to a shortage of street parking in the area.

Still, more change is ahead. For the west side of the intersection, which includes an adult video store and some empty storefronts, the city is negotiating with developers to build retail space and up to 500 apartments and condominiums. The plan calls for converting the historic Hollywood-Western building, a 1928 Art Deco landmark that once was a casting center for movie extras, into offices.

“This transit-oriented development makes sense in so many ways. Transit use helps congestion.... It’s helping us meet our housing needs,” Kyser said. “This is the way we have to go in the future.”