Renovations raising specter of too much traffic invading park.

WHEN the renovation and expansion of the Griffith Observatory is completed in two years, the rush of visitors could be so great there's talk of running shuttle buses.

But while the $83 million project is the largest underway in Griffith Park, it's far from the only one. The Los Angeles Zoo, the Greek Theater and Travel Town are all undergoing improvements or awaiting them.

That's not to mention the planned expansion of the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage--all in a park that already draws more than its share of visitors.

"Griffith Park is pretty much maxed out," said L.A. City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who helped get funding for a new $400,000 park master plan.

The plan, being developed by the city's parks department with the help of consultants, is aimed at reducing congestion and outlining how to beef up visitor services, protect wildlife and improve trails and other services.

Perhaps its biggest goal is determining how much more development the 4,100-acre park can take beyond the current crop of new projects.

Early attractions

Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith, a businessman who wanted to establish a place where the "plain people" could recreate and rest, bequeathed the park to the city in 1896. The endowment he left also funded the Greek Theater in 1930 and the observatory in 1935, while the park's Mount Lee serves as the location for the Hollywood sign, L.A.'s most famous landmark.

Since those early attractions, the park, with its vast expanses of open space, has often been seen as a prime location for new cultural facilities, such as the Autry museum in the 1980s. It also was proposed as the new home for the Children's Museum of Los Angeles in 1999, a plan beaten back by neighborhood opponents.

"We want to preserve the park as it is and expand it if possible," said Charles Soter, a member of the Los Feliz Improvement Association, who supports a ban on "hardscape" projects, such as a new museum on virgin land.

On that score, many parties seem to be in agreement, including the parks department and LaBonge, as well as other existing facility operators, such as the Autry.

The more immediate question is how to handle the 10 million annual visitors who cause weekend traffic jams and wear away grassy areas--as well as additional ones that will be drawn by the new projects already given the green light.

Those projects include doubling the observatory's size, an $8 million zoo entrance and educational facility and a $6 million facelift for the Greek. Still in the planning stages is the addition of 50,000 square feet of gallery space to the Autry to display the collection of the Southwest Museum following the merger of the two.

A draft of the master plan will be released in a few months. One of the ideas being considered to handle congestion is a park-wide shuttle system that would bring visitors in from remote lots, said Linda Barth, the parks department's master plan project manager.

The plan also is likely to call for beefing up visitor services, such as the construction of kiosks at entrances where rangers could director visitors to less used areas at busy times, Barth said.

Another question to be addressed by the plan: whether to allow cars to use interior roads that were closed in 1980s because of fire danger. Those roads are now accessible only by foot, bicycle or horse.

The plan will also tackle how to better establish connections to the Los Angeles River, which flows along two of its sides, along with the nearby Elysian Park and citywide bike paths.

Meanwhile, LaBonge has been talking to officials at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy about the possible purchase of privately held acreage west of the Hollywood sign that would be slated for wilderness and only accessible through hiking trails. Those talks are preliminary and to date no funding has been committed.

The additional land is loaded with steep canyons and not particularly suited for development, but LaBonge said that unless it is publicly owned, someone eventually will build on it. "It's an absolute benefit for people to look at land and see what a mountain is," he said.