Around the one year-old Metro Orange Line Busway in Van Nuys, there are still the industrial and light manufacturing businesses that located here when freight trains on the Southern Pacific line carried raw materials before the advent of interstate trucking.

The Orange Line now brings thousands of commuters through downtown Van Nuys and these riders disembark in an area with a Salvation Army store, a porno shop, an ice manufacturing company, auto painters, Big Valley Dodge and other one story buildings which close down at dusk. There is no street life, no places to sit down and buy a cup of coffee or read a book.

Imagine Van Nuys Boulevard, north of Oxnard redeveloped with apartments and residences above the street? This area would become a convenient and pleasant place to live since a car would not be a necessity. Residents would ride east and to go to Hollywood and downtown, or go west to attend Pierce College or shop in Woodland Hills. Some of the apartments would be geared towards seniors; others would have 4 or 5 bedrooms for large and extended families.

This is an excellent time for Los Angeles to devise and design a grand plan for Van Nuys Boulevard which would not only include residential buildings, but might also have decorative lampposts, trees, a center divider filled with plants (like on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City) and a very notable new LAPD headquarters to replace the dinosaur on the mall that nobody can find.