Artistic-oriented revival of North Hollywood gathering momentum.

Ironically, plummeting property values in the Community Redevelopment Agency's North Hollywood Project Area are now serving as a catalyst for the area's revival.

The project area, 750 acres just north of where the Ventura (134) and Hollywood (170) freeways meet, is among the oldest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley. Many of the area's retail and commercial structures are no longer suitable for modern users' needs.

But the area is also host to more than a dozen old theaters - dating back to the neighborhood's roots in the 1920s and 1930s. And by the early 1990s, the Los Angeles theater community began to rediscover these long-dark vaudeville and movie houses.

The theaters offer acting companies everything they could want - big empty spaces and extremely depressed rents. The proximity to Hollywood and several freeways didn't hurt matters either.

By 1992, enough of the theaters had reopened that community leaders and CRA officials realized they might be onto something. They proclaimed the area the NoHo Arts District and began focusing their revitalization efforts on attracting artistic-oriented enterprises.

Art attack

Now there are nearly 20 theaters operating or soon to be operating in the NoHo Arts District - which runs along Lankershim Boulevard between Camarillo and Cumpston streets, and Magnolia Boulevard between Tujunga Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard. Other arts-related businesses, from cafes to recording studios to post-production companies, have since moved into the area to take advantage of its growing arts scene.

The Los Angeles City Council just approved a role to let artists live in spaces designed for commercial use, allowing them to place their homes, studios and galleries all in the same space.

And last month, the CRA Board of Commissioners voted to raise its self-imposed North Hollywood spending cap from $89 million to a maximum of $535 million, extending funding for the project, which is set to expire next year, into the year 2019. The L.A. City Council still must approve that plan.

By just about all accounts, the arts seem to be acting as a remedy to the area's economic woes.

"The district was really depressed," said Fred Bower, a real estate broker with Re/Max on the Boulevard and chairman of the NoHo Development Committee.

"There used to be prostitutes and gang members on the corner of Cahuenga and Magnolia before Dan Hirsh started the Limelight Theater there," Bower said. "That all changed once the theater opened. It's just been fabulous."

Revival shows

Among those taking part in this revival is the theater group Actors Alley, which is currently rehabilitating the historic El Portal Theater.

In 1993, the group spent seven months and $250,000 in CRA loans and grants to rehabilitate the 1926 theater at 5220 Lanker-shim Blvd. But a month before its February 1994 opening, the Northridge earthquake collapsed the building's ceiling, rendering it uninhabitable.

Still, Actors Alley's commitment to the area continued. The group began performing plays in a tent across the street from the El Portal until the theater buildings' storefronts on Lankershim could be rehabilitated.

Now the group is performing in that retail space until work on the theater itself can be finished. The CRA has put up a $20,000 grant to cover pre-development costs on the rehabilitation project. Actors Alley is hoping to cover the rest with money from insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, though some delays in obtaining the FEMA money continue, said Bob Caine, managing director of Actors Alley. If all goes well, Caine said, the theater could open by April 1996.

"We're back in the building," Caine said, "and even though it's a small space, it gets us going."

Other popular theater groups, such as American Renegade Theater and Interact Theater, are also operating in the area.

And Sanford Meisner - whose students include Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Joanne Woodward and David Mamet - recently opened the Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts just down the street from the El Portal.

Ancillary businesses abound

"The district is starting to pick up momentum," Caine said. "There seems to be a lot of people looking to come in."

The theaters, in turn, have helped create an arts-oriented community. Coffee houses such as the Eclectic Cafe and Eagles Cafe now dot the street. Sam's Book City, a used bookstore, is a recent arrival as well. The old Bank of America building on the corner of Lankershim and Weddington Street has been turned into the Audio Visual Workshop, offering training in the recording and movie businesses.

In other words, it seems to be working, say those who live and work there.

"We now want to get the artists living here," said Bower. "That would really add to it."

Lillian Burkenheim-Silver, North Hollywood project manager for the CRA, said it took a while for the project area to capitalize on the arts. Though in a way, she said, the arts have always been a part of North Hollywood.

"The people who live in the community have always been involved and employed in the entertainment industry," Burkenheim-Silver said.

"Since the (redevelopment) project began in 1979, there has always been a goal to find a niche for North Hollywood - to make it unique, unlike any other part of the city," she said. "Slowly, there has been the realization that the arts is what North Hollywood is."