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ChineseNoHo’s billion-dollar TOD
[tags]los angeles, mta, red line, orange line, san fernando valley, north hollywood, transit oriented development[/tags]
This part of land is not going to remain so empty when a billion-dollar development goes into NoHo.
Credit: FredCamino via Flickr
North Hollywood is about to get one of L.A.’s largest and most expensive transit oriented developments.
Metro approved the NoHo Art Wave, a $1 billion plan by Lowe Enterprises last week that would bring 562 new housing units, nearly 1.75 million square feet of retail and 6,200 parking spaces around the terminals of the Red and Orange lines.
L.A. political blogger Mayor Sam said the project was railroaded through — no pun intended — with minimal input from the community.
See the following links:
- Tribune properties
- Los Angeles Business Journal: Lowe Lands NoHo Art Wave Project
- San Fernando Valley Business Journal: MTA Picks Developer Lowe For NoHo Project
- Los Angeles Daily News: Mixed-use project near transit hub moves ahead
- Bloomberg.com: Lowe Selected to Develop Los Angeles Subway Project
- Curbed LA: $1 Billion North Hollywood Project Approved
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
My instincts tell me I’m all for this project, but as a NoHo resident and a daily Metro rider I find it a little strange that the first time I heard about this proposal was the day before it was voted on.
6000+ parking spaces? Isn’t that a lot for a supposedly transit-oriented development?
I’m guessing that’s for both the residential and retail components. But STILL!
Someone who knows the calculations: please validate or assuage my concerns!
That’s a *lot* of parking. By comparison, one of the busiest commuter rail stations in Boston, Salem Centre, only has 340 spaces.
Is there a possibility of a typo here? A little googling leads me to learn that 6000 spaces is also equal to the entire amount of parking provided by the L. Yes. The entire L. The whole network of the Chicago Transit Authority.
Does The Grove even have 6,000 parking spaces?
I get roughly 1 parking space for every 350 sq ft of retail which is normal for nonTOD patterns. What I don’t understand is the VPD. Can the area stand an additional 80-100,000 VPD no matter how many improvements are made?
The 6200 spaces replace 1000 existing Metro spaces (with 1500 reserved for Metro). For those having trouble visualizing 6200 spaces this is two 5 story garages with 1 acre footprints (350ft x 350ft).
Thus the residential/retail component is looking more like TOD.
Personally I think parking share arrangements are great. Why do we need two parking lots for a movie theater and church?
lolz… the first thing i checked wuz the curbedLA article and the second comment i read was our ol’ pal peter mcferrin pwning hard. guy’s awesome. then some anonymous coward telling him to “go fu*k himself”. good ol’ internet.
Metro SFV’s governance council got a briefing about this, along with the proposed Universal City Station project and an overview of other projects on Metro properties, on Monday night.
A few pluses that aren’t mentioned:
1. The pedestrian tunnel under Lankershim Blvd. connecting the mezzanine of the Red Line with the boarding platform of the Orange Line, gets constructed.
2. The historic North Hollywood depot rehabilitation will be completed, and a Metro customer service center opened inside it.
3. The entire bus plaza will be underneath one of the parking structures, providing lots of shade and rain protection.
4. Metro gets a ton of lease money from the developer (since the property doesn’t change hands) and that is money which is almost always used for operating service.
As for “not hearing about it sooner”, there was an obscure little item on the Metro Board’s agenda several months ago authorizing the solicitation of bids. I’m not all that surprised that the details were kept secret until the approval process … pretty standard business security practices (TOD is finally becoming a significant factor in the competition among developers, and no one wants to have their proprietary information stolen).
McFerrin is right on the mark with his comments on curbedLA, BTW … the proposed office tower is going to be within a couple hundred yards of an already completed luxury apartment tower.
6200 seems like a crap load, but then again, so duz
i think 1500 strictly for metro is a plus but the rest, man thats alot. it all goes back to the whole TOD discussion from earlier, and another 1 i can’t find
I’m sorry, but if you are putting in that much parking, it’s an auto-oriented development near transit.
They are really encouraging people to drive there.
Raphael Mazor wrote:
They are really encouraging people to drive there.
They are driving now. There’s only about 500 spaces now. And Metro still has to serve all of the Martin Korns of the Valley, including Martin Korn.
Long Beach has a similar arrangement: the Wrigley Marketplace. Yes, that strip mall across the Willow station is transit-oriented development.
The Red Line lot gets amazingly full by 7am each weekday, worse on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. When I started going Metro, I got tired of driving to the station and tried driving to the Orange Line Van Nuys station. Then eventually I got tired driving on Van Nuys when I realized the 761, with some special bypass lanes near The Plant shopping center, gets me home in the same amount of time. Therefore my commute consists of the Metro Rapid 761, Orange Line, and Red Line. I also started using my bike more and sometimes I’d want to use the Woodman station on the Orange Line, which, like all station, has a bike rack. A bike is an invaluable mode of transport for connecing to the stations or completing trips. With that, I barely use my SUV anymore except when I have lazy people I need to transport.
More like accepting the reality of the situation.
As Wad says, a lot of people already drive to NoHo, and few have been converted to driving to an Orange Line park-ride lot instead (telling me that there are probably a lot of people driving to NoHo from the northernmost parts of the Valley or from nearby).
This is not uncommon at the terminal point of any rail system, and if this attracts people who will drive a short distance to the station rather than a longer distance on the freeway, that is still a win.
Raphael, try expanding your view. Everything does not have to be about wholesale conversion of people to using transit. Sometimes it is about making transit just attractive enough to get them to lower their car usage.
Kimberleigh:
For me, it’s a matter of balance. And this development looks way out of balance to me. And I’m 100% behind the park-and-ride concept.
But as was noted earlier, only 25% of the spots were reserved for metro, and presumably a similar number for residents. That still leaves a very large number (~3000) of spots for park-and-shop-when-you-could-easily-be-taking-public-transit shoppers. That’s a huge indulgence to drivers.
First let’s be sure that the former railroad right of way of the Orange Bus Line which is built on and continues to the Burbank MetroLink station is not taken over by any of the new development. This right of way needs to be available so that when the Orange Bus Line is upgraded to a LRT line which it should have been from the start can use this right of way to the MetroLink Burbank station.
With this as a LRT line from Burbank to Canoga Park stopping at the NoHo Red Line Station, many people who are now trying to park at NoHo will be using the LRT line and parking at NoHo will not be nearly as necessary.
Alan Fishel
I like the idea of extending the Orange Line north on the west end and to Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena on the east end, but which Burbank Metrolink line were you referring?
Was it the Burbank Airport station or the Burbank (downtown) station?
Either the Red Line or the Orange Line should go to the Burbank Airport Metrolink station.
I’ve wondered about a Metrolink line paralleling the 405 Fwy going from OC Airport to LB Airport to Blue Line, to LAX to Expo Line to Purple Line to Ventura Blvd to Orange Line to Metrolink Van Nuys station.
Building up Metrolink so that it runs ever 10-15 minutes is very important to our transit future. When I lived in North Hollywood, prior to the completion of the Red Line into the Valley, I found it easier and quicker to get downtown by driving to the Burbank (downtown) Station, taking Metrolink to Union Station and taking the red line to downtown.
No one who lives around the intersection of the Orange and Red lines should be allowed to scuttle this project just because congestion is worse for their single-occupancy vehicle. Anyone who lives downtown, Hollywood, along the Wilshire corridor or the Southeast valley lives in an urban city, not the suburbs.
I wonder who is even in charge of Metrolink planning and funding? There’s my research project today.
They couldn’t build anything of that size and expect everyone working/visiting/living there to transition to public transit immediately. It is a car culture, they need the parking.
They won’t make the tansition at all if parking is given such a huge indulgence.
Excuse the language, but how the HELL do you mitigate for a 6200 parking structure in the middle of a major transit hub?
Funny, I remember going to a forum on TOD where Snoble was the speaker. I remember saying to him that it was ridiculous that Hollywood-Highland had 3000 parking spaces and it negated any traffic improvement made by the inclusion of the red line station, and in fact exacerbated traffic in the area. After I pressed a little harder on follow-up after he sort of avoided it initially he responded “If we had it to do all over again we wouldn’t have suggested as much parking.”
Well here we are, less than 10 years later, making the same exact mistake.
People need to stop labeling this crap transit-oriented development and give it it’s proper name: Transit-proximate development:
Thanks Damien for that clarification.
I guess Transit-proximate development is better than transit-non-proximate development, but it’s not transit-oriented development.
But, public transit usage isn’t a leap from 100% car to 100% transit for everyone. From non-usage to 25% usage is a big step for many people. For some people, once they use it at all, they find it to be better than their fears and in fact advantageous in ways that hadn’t occurred to them. If a transit-promixate development helps some people start to use transit even a little bit, that’s still better than nothing.
If only it were that simple. It often exacerbates vehicular traffic in a location (slowing bus access to the location) and regionally, leading to reduced economic activity and ridership.
The appropriate comparison is projected ridership with true transit-oriented development, vs. transit-proximate development. One can be (literally) near zero sum, while the other can actually do something to assist in addressing the mobility crisis.