"Give me land, lots of land," the old song goes. "Don't fence me in."
That plea could be Los Angeles County's theme song these days as a shortage of land for homes, apartments and factories poses one of the biggest threats to the county's continued prosperity.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Friday September 10, 1999 Home Edition Business Part C Page 3 Financial Desk 1 inches; 24 words Type of Material: Correction
Parcel map--A map in Tuesday's Business Section incorrectly identified the location of Playa Vista. The site is south of Marina del Rey at Jefferson and Lincoln boulevards.
Lack of land for affordable homes and apartments presents an economic problem, experts say, because it means that people who already have a hard time finding affordable housing in Los Angeles County will have an even harder time in the future.
And lack of land to build modern industrial space threatens to prevent Los Angeles County from attracting the kinds of companies that bring the kinds of jobs L.A. sorely needs, according to a summer report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.
The LAEDC has been lamenting the shortage of industrial space for several years now, but recently it has quantified the shortfall. The county needs about 21 million square feet of new industrial space per year but only about 10 million square feet is being built, according to President Lee Harrington.
That translates into about 1,200 acres of new industrial land needed every year to satisfy current demand, the LAEDC report said. "Failure to meet such demand could result in the loss of more than $700 million annually in high-value manufacturing wages to the local economy," the report said.
The problem isn't so much an absolute lack of land as a lack of land in the right places.
Except for the 1,087-acre Playa Vista tract near Marina del Rey and the 1,300-acre Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley, there are few undeveloped tracts close to existing centers of population and commerce in Los Angeles County.
Newhall Land & Farming Co. has about 6,000 acres remaining to develop for homes and industry in Valencia, where it has completed 14,000 homes and 12 million square feet of industrial space, and where it has plans for 9,000 more homes and 10 million square feet more of industrial buildings, said Marlee Lauffer, a company spokeswoman.
In addition to the Valencia property, the company has 6,000 acres of land to develop in Newhall, with about 5,000 acres scheduled for homes and 1,000 acres for industry, Lauffer said. Nearby in Santa Clarita is the partly developed 4,000-acre Stevenson Ranch, which is owned by Lennar Homes.
Otherwise, except for the distant edges of the county, the pickings are slim.
