COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENTS' SUCCESS RIDING ON THE RAILS
By MORRIS NEWMAN, Special to The Times

Turning a concept long cherished by environmentalists into reality,developers in Los Angeles are building the area's first "transit villages," in which homes, stores and social services are clustered around rail stations. Although rail-centered developments already exist in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and elsewhere, transit villages are still a novelty--and something of a financial dare--in car-crazy Southern California.

If today's builders succeed, however, more such projects are likely to follow. At least two so-called transit-oriented developments are under construction in the Los Angeles area. One is Hollywood & Highland, a $385-million entertainment and shopping center in Hollywood, which incorporates a Metro Rail station. A second is Village Green, a housing development in Sylmar where, by September, residents will be able to walk a few hundred feet from their front doors to a Metrolink station.

Getting people to buy a house or rent an apartment close to train tracks may be a tough sell in a part of the country that has often thumbed its nose at mass transit. Attitudes are different in the Bay Area, where the local transit agency is assisting at least five such projects and has earmarked $9 million in federal funds to help.

Transit village sites can be found in Solano County, Castro Valley,West Oakland and San Francisco's Mission District. Although Southern California's Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a program to promote development around stations, the completion of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System more than two decades ago has given the Bay Area a head start in the planning and building of transit villages.

To market such communities in the Southland, however, builders must overcome a long-standing local bias against living near train and bus stations. Home builder Avi Brosh, president of Agoura Hills-based Braemar Urban Development, said he encountered resistance to the idea when he proposed the Village Green development near a Metrolink line. The 300-home development is being built by a partnership of Braemar and Lee Group of Marina del Rey. "Everybody told me, 'Who the hell wants to live next to train tracks?' " Brosh recalled. "I said, 'Gosh, that's the point, isn't it?' "

To be sure, not everyone is put off by the notion of living near a train station. Risela and Luis Coye, a young Burbank couple, recently agreed to buy a new home in Village Green for the very reason that their house will be across the street from a Metrolink stop. The couple said they believe the location will make their lives easier and better. Both plan to take the train to work, albeit in different directions.

She will travel south to Universal Studios, where she works as a human resources coordinator. Luis will ride the train north to Valencia, where he works in a warehouse. And their daughter will spend some time in the day-care center next to the station.

Some homeowners believe a nearby commuter rail station would hurt their property values. Brosh predicts just the opposite for his development. "If we come back in 10 years, these houses are really going to increase in value" and be part of a larger urban development, he said.

A 1995 study headed by UC Berkeley professor John Landis showed that housing values tended to rise in the Bay Area near BART stations, as well as in San Diego near stations for that city's trolley system. Light rail did not seem to affect prices, however, along lines in Sacramento and San Jose, or along the Caltrain route between San Francisco and San Jose. The authors observed that "regional systems like BART, which provide reliable, frequent and speedy service and which serve large market areas are more likely" to enhance the value of nearby housing.

Urban planners and environmentalists have long promoted the concept of transit villages, where people can perform most of their daily routines--shopping, going to work, seeing the doctor--on foot. Hence planners see rail systems as engines to do more than carry commuters: They also can transform neighborhoods into pedestrian-oriented places. "It doesn't make sense to have a rail facility with nothing around it except a sea of parking," said Karen Frick, project manager of Transportation for Livable Communities, a program of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, or MTC, the regional transit agency for nine Bay Area counties.

However, there are substantial financial risks, said Robert Cervero, professor of urban planning at UC Berkeley. Train stations often are located in poor or depressed areas, he said. Such neighborhoods often need substantial public subsidies to get started. To get the most environmental benefits, he said, transit developments need to provide for as many of the needs of their residents as possible.

The Village Green project, for instance, features only housing, while several of the Bay Area projects combine housing with shops, clinics and day-care centers. As an example of community rebuilding around a transit station, he cited an upcoming project near his university. In June, construction will start on the Fruitvale BART Transit Village in Oakland, partially funded by the MTC.

The developer, the nonprofit Spanish-Speaking Unity Council, plans to build 200 apartments, 35,000 square feet of stores, a senior center, a new branch of the Oakland Public Library, a child-care facility with a Headstart program, a day-care facility and an adult health-care facility that will provide day care for the elderly on the 10.5-acre BART-owned site.

Although transit villages are usually built long after train systems are in place and operating, at least one Southland city was so eager to build housing near a rail station that it pushed forward a project for a rail line that did not yet exist. In downtown Pasadena, a public-private group that included the city, the MTA and two private developers completed work on Holly Street Village in 1994. The 374-unit project incorporates a site for a future Blue Line station. The apartment complex will wait years for a Blue Line train to roll through, however. State transit officials said they would delay until May any decision on how to fund construction of the Pasadena Blue Line, which would connect the city to downtown Los Angeles.

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