What future awaits the southern San Fernando Valley’s commercial corridor along Ventura and Cahuenga boulevards?
City leaders are hoping to answer that question, and have taken the first steps to look into revamping the development plans and rules for a 17-mile-long corridor they describe as the “commercial heart” of the Valley.
Four Valley council members introduced a motion this month asking for a report back on ways to update the planning blueprint for a commercial corridor that runs through six communities, including Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills.
The commercial stretch is familiar to many Valley residents, and has had a few brushes with fame, including with its recent appearance in a music video by the rock trio, Haim. A section of Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks was cleared of traffic to allow the Valley-bred musicians to strut and dance down the street.
The existing planning document for that lengthy street is known as the Ventura-Cahuenga Corridor Specific Plan and was first adopted 26 years ago. The council members now say those plans have become “stagnant and unresponsive to changes in community and business needs, design guidelines, commercial economics and development.”
What’s more, the plan has been “unable to cope with the changing housing and transportation policy at the local and state level,” and “inelastic requirements for addressing transportation mitigations have also resulted as the plan has aged and priorities have changed.”
The council members considering a fresh look at the corridor are Bob Blumenfield, Paul Krekorian, David Ryu and Paul Koretz. Their motion follows the adoption of similar recommendations by the specific plan’s Plan Review Board, which is made up of local stakeholders appointed by the local council offices.
That planning review board approved a motion last summer calling on city leaders to provide funding for the plan update process, and it lays out some of the oft-heard complaints about the corridor.
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One of the deficiencies highlighted is that parts of the corridor are not pedestrian-friendly and feature inadequate or non-existent sidewalks. The street also could fall short of a regional Southern California Association of Governments plan calling for streets that cater to an increasing population with more of an appetite for public mass transportation.
Also, the vision of the corridor as a “main street” has been overtaken by traffic congestion, brought on by motorists using the Ventura and Cahuenga boulevards to escape traffic on the U.S. 101 and 405 freeways, according to the motion.
The corridor plan, adopted in the 20th century in 1991, also notes the street may not be prepared to handle the 21st century, and the changes that might entail. The review board’s motion states that the corridor’s existing plans “cannot respond to the imminent changes in social attitudes, transit modes and technologies such as phone apps, ride-sharing, automated vehicles and automated robotic parking structures.”
There are also complaints about a lack of consistency. The street serves “some communities relatively well and others poorly,” and not all areas have “achieved its development goals,” the motion says.
The motion also highlights concerns that the rest of the Valley may be moving on without the corridor, with the specific plan containing no strategy to respond to the widening of the U.S. 101 Freeway nor the “revitalization of the Los Angeles River.” And there could be adverse effects from failing to keep up with nearby projects in Woodland Hills and the Warner Center, the motion said. The Warner Center recently fell under a newly adopted specific plan allowing for more density.
The motion also expresses concern that existing state law could encourage more residential development, which could crowd out commercial and retail space that is there now.
Despite these concerns, some communities “are fearful that changing the plan will result in harmful development,” the motion notes. But the board motion also counters that people in other communities are “fearful” that the area could get “poor or no development” if the plan is not updated.
