Development Officials Pushing Overall Plan for NoHo By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency has formed an ad-hoc steering committee of community and business leaders who are scheduled to meet Sept. 29 with representatives from a Washington, D.C. land-use think tank in an effort to craft a plan for developing North Hollywood’s commercial district. Already on the table for the area, which includes 740 acres of CRA land, as well as various parcels owned by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, is the long-delayed, $218 million NoHo Commons project, a mixed used development proposed by J.H. Snyder Co., and a recently approved “transit village” plan to build a new high school, housing, offices and retail shops next to the NoHo MTA subway station. But as for the balance of the project area, there are many opinions about what should be built and who should build it, including a proposal by Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to bring in a hotel, and another to build a sports stadium. Hoping to sharpen the focus, the CRA’s committee will meet with representatives from the Urban Land Institute, which provides volunteer panels of experts to communities across the globe who are having to make critical commercial and residential real estate development and land use policy-making decisions. The idea, insists the CRA’s chief executive, Robert “Bud” Ovrom, is not to put together another study, but to offer a viable plan for projects that can be implemented almost from the beginning, bypassing, to a large degree, the city’s often Kafkaesque planning and public hearing process for commercial projects. “There have been many ideas floated about what to do in the area, so the plan is to take all of those ideas that are on the table and come up with a development strategy that can be completed soon after the end of the calendar year,” said Ovrom. Once agreements are set, the ULI will bring in a panel of five to 10 volunteer land-use experts, including architects, landscape designers, developers and others who will spend a week in the city comprising a plan that will include feedback from the community, as well as city and business leaders. Members of the CRA’s committee include Bruce Ackerman, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, Bruce Spiegel, president of the Studio City/NoHo Chamber of Commerce, Yaroslovsky and MTA Chairman Roger Snoble. Ovrom said because a plan devised by the ULI will include community input, as well as input from city officials and others with a stake in the future of the NoHo area, there are fewer hoops to jump through once an agreement is made. In addition, because the panel would be comprised of experts from other parts of the county, their opinions on a development plan are all but guaranteed to put political and personal interests aside. “If a plan is crafted from the very beginning and makes good use of community input, and when it comes out says ‘this is what the city and community want to see,’ then the table is set for implementation, as opposed to a developer coming in and going through the long process of reviews, public hearings,” Ovrom said. “The idea here is to decide on a plan for what makes a whole community,” said Spiegel. “It’s a birds-eye view of what belongs here and what doesn’t.” Founded in 1936, the ULI has roughly 18,000 members working in the public and private sectors, a staff of 100 in Washington, D.C., and a $27 million operating budget. Meanwhile, the first phase of construction of the NoHo Commons project is slated for late September or early October. The development includes roughly 700 units of housing and approximately 270,000 square feet of office and retail space. Funding for the project includes $31 million in loans and grants from the CRA. Earlier this month, Mayor James Hahn and Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Roy Romer announced a plan for a land swap between the two to make way for a $77 million high school. Under the terms of the agreement, the MTA will offer the district a chunk of vacant land along the railroad right-of-way on Chandler Boulevard near the subway station for land the owned by the LAUSD and the CRA. The deal allows the district to construct a new East Valley high school on one end, and offers some land for the NoHo Commons project.
