MTA pushes Orange Line mixed-use development.

An official with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority touted a planned mixed-use development near the Metro Red Line station in North Hollywood as "a model" of what can be built to encourage people to use public transportation.

Request for proposals go out this month to solicit ideas from developers of what they want to do with the 17-acre site, Roger Moliere, executive officer of real property management and development with the MTA told the Livable Communities Council at its meeting Aug. 15.

The proposed project mixing residential with commercial and retail uses could not have been done five years ago but since that time there has been an increase in the population base and employment bases in that area that makes it more attractive, Moliere said.

"This should be a model where people will be able to five and go places and go shopping without the burden of long trips with their cars," Moliere said.

Moliere raised the North Hollywood project during a presentation to the council about development along transportation corridors, focusing on the Orange Line busway bisecting the San Fernando Valley. The Orange Line terminates in North Hollywood across Lankershim Boulevard from the Red Line station.

While the MTA is not in the real estate development business, the agency owns property along transportation corridors and near bus and train stations through right-of-way acquisitions, Moliere said.

In the Valley, the MTA has 4-acre parcels at the Balboa and Canoga Park Orange Line stops, and a 12-acre plot containing 1,200 parking spaces at the Sepulveda Orange Line station.

The MTA is eyeing the Sepulveda property as a potential development site as there was a "miscalculation" of the number of riders actually using the parking lot, Moliere said.

He has met with community residents about future plans for the property and designers from the agency will take input from nearby residents on what should be done with the land, Moliere added.

The council used Moliere's appearance to discuss the importance of creating housing and commercial areas near transportation hubs to encourage use of mass transit.

Some members raised changing the requirement of two parking spaces per multi-family housing unit as a way to reduce reliance on cars.

"That could be an incentive for people to move into these things with just one car," said Dan Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University Northridge. While the MTA supports such incentives, Moliere said, such a policy has market implications and could make multi-family housing too expensive to build.

An option open to developers would be building a community parking garage that gets torn down once the mass transit system matures, fewer cars are used and the parking no longer needed, Moliere said.

The need for parking spaces numbering into the thousands at developments close to transportation hubs was a sign that the Los Angeles mass transit system has a ways to go to reach maturity, Moliere said.

The North Hollywood project requires 6,000 parking spaces for its 2 million square feet, of which only 300,000 square feet will be residential.

Transit Coalition Executive Director Bart Reed cautioned, however, that plans for mixed use development actually be fulfilled rather than being predominantly residential.

BY MARK R. MADLER Staff Reporter