A new city report found that developers could add 3 million square feet of commercial space to the Ventura Boulevard corridor under current zoning rules, despite concerns by residents and elected officials that the area is overdeveloped.
The long-awaited report, released this week by the Los Angeles Planning Department, comes as a new building boom in the southern San Fernando Valley has some residents pushing for new growth controls.
The report assessed commercial development in the area regulated by the city's Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, a landmark zoning effort enacted 16 years ago to control growth along the historic corridor.
It found that the corridor has added about 1 million square feet of commercial space since 1991. Although in planning circles that's considered a significant amount, it represents only a fourth of the commercial growth allowed under the rules, the report said.
The study did not count residential growth -- including large mixed-use developments -- because the rules only limit commercial growth. Thousands of residential units have been added or approved for construction in the area over the last few years, and some community activists say the city should count these condominiums and apartments in assessing whether the area is overbuilt.
A recent Times search of city traffic records showed that while residential development on and near Ventura Boulevard was being planned and built, traffic worsened significantly at 10 major intersections.
Robert Duenas, senior city planner for the area, said that if the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan area were being developed today, it would be very different. Planners would have used a more precise tool than square footage to estimate the size and effects of development, and most likely would have included housing and other development.
The plan as it's written now, he said, could easily allow more congestion and overbuilding than was intended, particularly because development tends to be clustered in popular neighborhoods, rather than spread out along the entire 17-mile stretch from Studio City to Woodland Hills that is covered by the plan.
"Legally under the plan it shows that we have capacity, but in reality if somebody were to concentrate all that capacity in one little spot it could have a devastating effect on that area," Duenas said. "People don't anticipate it to be all bunched up, but that's how it occurred."
