Van Nuys Ca Development And Redevelopment

Despite a 50% jump in costs, the city's top two administrators are prepared to recommend that Los Angeles go ahead with construction of a new civic center building in Van Nuys to provide centralized services for the San Fernando Valley, officials said Monday. A report by Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton and Acting City Administrative Officer Paul Cauley was being finalized Monday for release as early as today so it can be acted on next month by the City Council, officials said.

Fresh from a $2.5 million face-lift, the Holiday Inn Express Hotel was rededicated Thursday--more than five years after it was forced to close by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The 132-room hotel boasts several improvements over its pre-temblor predecessor, including a fitness center, three banquet halls, a marbled front desk and foyer--and 38 steel reinforcement beams, said general manager George Noumer. "Our reopening signifies to the community that we are back," Noumer said.

Three car dealerships along Van Nuys Boulevard will be either building new facilities or improving existing ones, the Van Nuys Auto Row Business Improvement District Advisory Board announced. Keyes Toyota will break ground on a 70,000-square-foot structure with rooftop parking Oct. 29, said Larry Abramson, vice president of operations at Keyes Motors Inc.

Goodwill Industries of Southern California plans to open a new Van Nuys location, complete with a career resource center and a used computer section. "The computer recycling store will be the first of its kind besides the one in our main offices," said Richard Guise, a community relations manager for Goodwill. The new store, scheduled to open June 13, will also have a career resource center where people will be able to use a computer to search for jobs in the area.

Calling it "an abuse of money that is staggering," the chairman of a citizens advisory council lashed out Tuesday at city officials over plans to rebuild two massive hangars at Van Nuys Airport for more than $11.5 million, the costliest project in the airport's history. Armed with color slides and photocopied documents, George Jerome outlined plans approved in January by Los Angeles airport commissioners to repair the World War II-era buildings, damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Robina Suwol and the roughly 50 other members of the Tobias Avenue Homeowners Assn. have charged themselves with a mission--improve the quality of life in Van Nuys. The group hopes to get some direction on how to best do that when representatives of Mayor Richard Riordan, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski and the city Department of Building and Safety attend the group's monthly meeting on Tuesday.

A campaign to give a vacant industrial site near Van Nuys Airport an economic lift got a boost when a City Council panel approved a $2-million grant request to help convert the site into a business park. The grant proposal for the Marquardt Industrial Office Park subdivision project is expected to go to the City Council for its approval as soon as Friday. The grant, to be funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce's earthquake assistance program, would be used to make some of the $5.

Aiming to revitalize a long-vacant industrial site, city officials are seeking $2 million in federal funds to convert a large tract near Van Nuys Airport into a business park. Los Angeles Councilman Joel Wachs said Tuesday he will request the money to convert the 55 acres formerly occupied by defense contractor Kaiser Marquardt into an industrial park with more than a dozen businesses. The funds would come from the U.S. Department of Commerce's earthquake assistance program. "This effort . . .

When considering the San Fernando Valley's evolution from ranch-dotted agricultural tract to dense grid of subdivisions, one often imagines the turning point to be the 1950s heyday of suburbia. But decades prior to that postwar boom, the true groundwork had been laid by Isaac Van Nuys, Hobart J. Whitley and William Paul Whitsett. At the turn of the century, the three were all key players in the purchase of the southern half of the Valley by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co.

A prominent San Fernando Valley developer who built Warner Center's gleaming high-rise buildings has been selected to renovate the aging, quake-damaged Van Nuys Civic Center, officials announced Wednesday. The Voit Cos. of Woodland Hills beat out three other finalists for a city contract to build a $35-million, 210,000-square-foot municipal building with retail shops, a market plaza and a 300-space parking structure on a 2.3-acre city site.