TRANSIT `VILLAGES' FOR L.A.? MAYOR'S PLAN WOULD CLUSTER HOUSING NEAR BUS, RAIL LINES.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA Staff Writer

While publicly touting his vision for a ``subway to the sea,'' Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been quietly crafting a far-reaching plan to reinvent the city by rezoning massive swaths of land and creating ``urban villages'' along L.A.'s transit corridors.

Behind closed doors, the mayor and planners have been creating a ``blueprint'' for development that would provide residential and commercial opportunities within a half-mile of public transit systems, including the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley.

``The goal is to produce urban villages with high-quality developments that would encourage pedestrian and transit-oriented design,'' said Jaime De La Vega, who has a master's degree in urban planning and works as Villaraigosa's transportation deputy.

Villaraigosa wants to have hundreds of parcels rezoned within the next year to facilitate construction of high-density residential projects in locations that would encourage the use of public transit, aides say.

With so much at stake -- houses, communities, traffic and funding -- the one-year timeline hardly seems long enough to take on what is likely to be a litany of concerns from community members likely to oppose it.

Some worry that real-estate speculators will swoop into Los Angeles, which already has some of the nation's most expensive housing. Others fear that developers will be able to fast-track shoddy projects without sufficient oversight from the public or private sectors.

``The devil is going to be in the details,'' said Darrell Clarke, co-chairman of Friends 4 Expo, a citizens light-rail advocacy group.

``We have a lot of developers that build boxes. The question is, will they really be transit-oriented development or put more cars on the street? Will they have amenities or will they fit into the neighborhoods?''

Villaraigosa initially plans to focus on areas around the Expo Line, a $640 million rail system on which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to break ground this month. It is this route that will eventually serve l.a.live, a multibillion-dollar entertainment and convention complex planned near Staples Center.

But the mayor also has visions of chains of ``urban villages'' along the Orange Line in the Valley; the Gold Line that runs from Pasadena to Boyle Heights; and the Red Line subway between Union Station and North Hollywood.

He'd also like to extend the concept along the Green Line between Norwalk and the South Bay and the Blue Line from downtown to Long Beach, although he doesn't have jurisdiction over land outside L.A.'s boundaries.

MTA and city executives met within the past few months and agreed to find ways to ease the approval process for residential developers seeking zone changes or variances near subway or light-rail routes.

And last week, planners began asking banks to underwrite an extensive study of all publicly owned properties along transit lines that could be available for development.

The MTA, for instance, has already lined up about two dozen of its properties along rail and subway lines for development, including the NoHo Commons.

MTA officials hope to use the parcels to build at least 2,800 apartment and 385 condominium units, along with 285,200 square feet of retail space.

``This creates an enormous economic engine,'' said Roger Moilere, the MTA's executive officer of real estate.

The former land acquisition and development attorney says, however, that the city's convoluted permitting process has slowed the MTA's progress in building residential and commercial projects along the transit lines.

Critics point out that zoning regulations are often the only way residents can protect and preserve their communities. Some homeowners and tenants claim that existing city regulations already favor developers and they fear what could happen if rules are relaxed further.

``This sounds like a really ambitious agenda,'' said Genevieve Giuliano, director of the National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research. ``In some of these areas, there are going to be issues with existing neighbors that are not going to want high-rise development. This will really be challenging.''

De La Vega insisted that the communities will continue to have a role in deciding the future of their neighborhoods.

``Any proposed changes to the city's zoning will go through a comprehensive public hearing so that local residents who might be affected will have the opportunity to voice their opinions,'' he said.

With the Los Angeles Basin expected to grow by 6.3 million people by 2030, bringing the region's population to 23 million, there is increasing pressure to allow denser residential development near transit routes, with a strong mix of commercial and retail projects to help create jobs.

The developments, De La Vega says, will help cope with a housing crunch while creating a new class of urban transit riders.

The team is looking at relaxing rules that keep building heights at a minimum and lessening requirements for parking spaces.

Still, even with the proposed incentives, developers are wary. They complain that it's difficult to embark on large-scale mixed-use developments because of resistance from neighbors and problems acquiring land from multiple owners.

``There's a lot of land-banking and speculation purchase along these corridors because investors know agencies or private developers will look at that parcel to make a development really work,'' said Katherine Perez, vice president of residential development at Forrest City Enterprises in Cleveland and the former director of the Transportation and Land Use Collaborative of Southern California.

``It makes it difficult to do development at a meaningful scale. A lot of developers will just drop out. You have landowners that are holdouts and developers who say they can't wait.''

A study commissioned by Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke and City Councilman Herb Wesson found that the city would have to allow for more density -- sometimes up to twice what's currently permitted -- to make development around the Expo Line profitable for developers.

But the city could also entice developers by lifting parking space and height requirements on buildings.

All of these possibilities are being looked at by Villaraigosa's team.

But critics note that in car-crazy Los Angeles, building high-rises next to subways or rail lines isn't going to automatically create the transit culture Villaraigosa and his planners hope for. Right now, just 5 percent of the county's residents regularly use public transit.

``The idea is that the level of car ownership will be lower because people will not need cars because they have such transit access. But there is not a lot of evidence that tells us car-ownership levels are lower in transit-oriented development,'' said the NCMTR's Giuliano.

``In Los Angeles, we don't have a dense transit network and we probably never will,'' she said. ``The influence of being near transit is not going to be as significant as in New York.''

Moreover, others say building new homes and shops near a transit hub -- even below-market units -- is out of reach for the low-income Angelenos who actually ride buses and trains.

``We are building condos like mad throughout the Valley and people want to continue building them when the market is going to be saturated at these price points. But you are not going to be getting more transit riders,'' said Joel Kotkin, a Valley Village resident who wrote ``The City: A Global History.''

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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Transit development hubs

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist