The black and white photos all show how Van Nuys Bl. looked in the period from 1911-1957.
Yesterday there was announcement from Metro.
Metro will build a 9-mile-long light rail down the center of Van Nuys Boulevard, stretching from Sylmar to the Orange Line Van Nuys station near Oxnard St.
The light rail service yard for train maintenance will be built near Raymer St along the Metrolink tracks in the “Option B” area. “Option A” near Oxnard and Kester, that would have destroyed 58 buildings, 186 businesses and 1,000 jobs will not happen.
From the inception of Van Nuys in 1911 until the late 1950s, an electric rail car connected Van Nuys, North Hollywood and Hollywood and provided a means of public transportation from this part of the San Fernando Valley to the rest of Los Angeles.
The modernization of Los Angeles, which always put the car before anything else, led to the ripping out of the rail and its replacement with an enormously wide boulevard of ten lanes of asphalt.
Van Nuys Boulevard today is probably in its worst state of economic and social decline in its history. With its empty stores, shabby buildings, homeless men and women and neglected properties it stands as a civic disgrace.
Hopefully, the light rail will lead to a change in the betterment of Van Nuys, though local leaders, such as Councilwoman Nury Martinez are often lukewarm about public transportation, painting it in fearful terms of criminality and danger, or still characterizing it as a cattle car for maids and dishwashers to get to work, rather than as a means of transportation for every single citizen of Los Angeles to use.
Any incident of crime is unacceptable on a Metro train.
But how many private cars break the law every single day by speeding, running over pedestrians, going through red lights, and taking part in car chases, drive-by-shootings, hold-ups and child kidnappings?
Here is an article from Curbed LA describing the new project:
“Metro is moving forward with plans for a new rail line in the eastern San Fernando Valley.
One of the 28 projects that the agency plans to have up-and-running in time for the 2028 Olympics, the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor would run from the Orange Line station in Van Nuys to the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink station, about 9 miles to the north.
Metro had considered building the line as a rapid bus route, rather than rail, but on Thursday the agency’s board of directors approved plans that would advance the project as a light rail route similar to the existing Gold, Blue, and Green lines.
“I have long dreamed of a day when we would have more than two Metro train stops,” Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, told the Metro board.
He called the line the “largest economic development project in the San Fernando Valley this millennium.”
Most of the line would travel along Van Nuys Boulevard, with trains traveling on tracks built in the center of the road. For the final 2.5 miles of the route, trains would travel on San Fernando Road to the northernmost stop.
Metro expects a trip from end-to-end would take about 29 minutes, and that the train could carry close to 50,000 riders per day by 2040. Eventually, the line could connect with a future transit project through the Sepulveda Pass.
That would give Valley residents significantly more options when navigating the city.
Since the line will be served by light rail, Metro will need to add a service station for trains that travel along the route. The agency had considered putting that facility on a parcel of land close to the Van Nuys station, but local property owners complained that the plan would displace hundreds of businesses.
Now, Metro plans to put that maintenance yard closer to the Van Nuys Metrolink station, where it would have to acquire fewer properties. Some businesses would still be displaced, and several business owners expressed concern Thursday that they could be forced to close up shop.
These businesses would be eligible for relocation fees, and on Thursday Metro Boardmember Sheila Kuehl also asked staffers to look into creating a fund to compensate business owners for disruptions caused by construction of the line.
The light rail tracks would serve 14 stations running through the communities of Van Nuys, Panorama City, Arleta, Pacoima, and the city of San Fernando. The entire project would cost about $1.3 billion to construct. Metro previously considered running a short leg of the line underground, but found that would more than double the project cost.
Now that Metro has settled on a design for the project, the agency will complete a final environmental review before preparing to begin construction.
The Metro Planning Board will not recommend the demolition of 33 acres of light industry near Kester and Oxnard that would have obliterated 58 buildings, 186 businesses and endangered 1,000 jobs within walking distance of downtown Van Nuys.
“Option A” was a proposed light rail service yard that would have serviced a 9.2 mile public transit train line that will be built from Sylmar/San Fernando to Van Nuys.
Instead, the board said “Option B”, a site around Keswick and Van Nuys Bl., near the existing Metrolink trains, is a better choice for the new site of the service yard.
Construction is anticipated to begin in 2021, with the line opening in 2027.
There are businesses in the “Option B” area that must relocate and they are, predictably and understandably, upset by the decision.
But the “Option B” district is not adjacent to a residential area, and has far fewer parcels, making it a cheaper and faster choice for Metro to demolish and compensate property owners.
Option A
Imagine this as a beer garden, an outdoor restaurant, a park, or a site for new courtyard housing.
“Option A” runs along the Orange Line with its bike path and bus line slated for conversion to light rail.
It is a bustling and well-located area of affordably priced light industry which one day could also be used for inserting cafes, small retail stores, low profile apartments and multi-family dwellings, providing a new residential/work/recreation district in Van Nuys.
To lose it to the bulldozer would have been a tragedy, and let us hope that community activists, architects, investors and city planners will recognize the potential in the “Option A” area and design a new prototype for progressive living in Van Nuys.
The development of North Hollywood started in the early 1900s and was one of the earliest coherent towns in the San Fernando Valley.
Its commercial district, along Lankershim Blvd. was lively, prosperous, and safe.
After WWII, there was a brief flowering of progressive design along the commercial strip which sought to upgrade buildings and attract new customers.
In these photos, taken from the LAPL archives of the Valley Press, one can see a healthy and happy environment that, sadly, could not compete against large department stores and huge parking lots that were built, starting in the 1950s, near Victory and Laurel Canyon.
Ironically, the return of the Red Line subway to North Hollywood has spurred the renovation and rebirth of the Lankershim area into an arts district which is far more sustainable than an auto-oriented shopping mall. Sears and the Valley Plaza are now the blighted ones who are on the verge of being redeveloped.
It takes a village to make a community, not just 3,000 parking spaces.
So here we look, with wonder and envy, at the North Hollywood that once existed.
One day, soon, there will be a revitalization of Van Nuys Boulevard.
Gone forever will be the hopeless days when people laughed to mock it, or ran away in revulsion.
All the central gathering places that should be occupied by civilized things, all the lots that hold parking, all the empty buildings along Van Nuys Boulevard, will be replaced with vibrant, happy, upbeat, successful businesses and residents.
It will take nothing more than $5 billion dollars to invest in new transit, new apartments, new multi-family housing, new police officers, a new police station, an army of street cleaners, and law enforcement people who will ticket illegally parked cars, handicap placard abusers, unregulated street sellers, unlicensed signs, and unpermitted businesses.
The narrowing of Victory Boulevard, the planting of 200 oak trees from Kester to Van Nuys Boulevard, will bring about a revitalization of the formerly crappy strip of low rent mini-malls, slum apartments and empty stores. The LAPD Victory Precinct at the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard and Victory, and its drop-in center there will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
150 new LAPD officers, out of a police force of some 10,000 will be specifially assigned to the area.
Some 50 new apartment buildings, from Sherman Way to Oxnard, with 10,000 new apartments, will be built and 20% of them will rent for under market value.
Security cameras will enforce the law to prevent speeding, red light running, assault, vandalism, burglaries of properties and hold-ups on the street.
There will be decorative streetlights, three new parks, new benches, and thousands of shade trees planted along the boulevard to protect against temperatures that get hotter every year.
Bike lanes, light rail, automobiles and pedestrians will share a new Van Nuys Boulevard divided between all types of transport, from foot to motor to public.
And the architecture will be inventive, modern, and integrate environmentally such necessities as solar energy and district wide free wi-fi.
In a nod to the old Van Nuys, the first orange grove planted in the Valley in 90 years will be manned by formerly homeless men and women who will guard the orchards as they would their own children. There will be 10 houses planted around the grove to ensure the safety and security of the new urban agriculturalists.
The low industrial buildings in the neighborhood around Kester and Oxnard, all 33 acres, were preserved in 2018, and later became an incubator for creatives who settled in the area and built narrow houses near the Orange Line, and worked and lived next to artisans, musicians, brewers, car restorers and craftspeople of every skill.
All of this is possible.
The people who will decide whether this is fantasy or reality are reading this post.
A few years ago, informally, someone named our section of Van Nuys, “Kester Ridge” even though there is no elevation here, only a continuation of the same elevation that runs from Victory to Vanowen and from Kester west to Sepulveda.
But everyone believes and uses the imaginary name, invoking it to conjure up community coherence.
The area is generally well-kept, anchored by grander houses along Hamlin St. that were built in the late 1930s when 18 acres were carved out of walnut groves. Now many of these homes are being carved into concrete ranchettes with car repair in the garage, and backyards denuded of trees and replaced with driveways and black Hummers. But the bucolic air of the recent past still remains if you drive down Hamlin without looking right or left.
To the north are well-maintained, solid ranch houses along such streets as Kittridge, Haynes, Saloma, Lemona, Norwich, Noble and Burnet.
These are tree-lined streets and the people who live here try to keep their homes clean. The average price of a house is somewhere around $800,000, though they rarely go over a million or less than $600,000.
Most houses have security cameras and alarms, and almost every home has been burglarized, but people are vigilant.
The recent developments along Sepulveda, the tearing down of old prostitution motels like The Voyager, would seem to foretell something positive, but new, 200 unit apartments, five stories tall, with hundreds of new parking spaces and modern, looming architecture, has instead created unease and worry in this area.
Last night, at Valley Hospital, in the community room, representatives from Councilwoman Nury Martinez’s office and a gentleman who works for the City of Los Angeles government and advises on parking restrictions, spoke about potentially creating permitted parking on our single-family residential streets.
This action would, homeowners hoped, stop the proliferation of cars and other vehicles that are now crowding the curbs, especially on streets closer to apartment buildings.
But in order for the licensed, fee-based system of placards and registration to take place, 75% of all the residents in the area would have to agree that paid parking by permission only was their preference.
That blew the gasket and infuriated attendees. They now understood that 75% of apartment units on Victory, Sepulveda, Vanowen and Kester would have to join in the clean curb party and sign a petition saying they wanted to rent out annual permits to park along formerly free streets. That will never happen.
Apartment dwellers depend on nearby streets to store their cars at night and get to work in the morning. Just like everyone who stays in a house.
There is no way to reason with people in Los Angeles who want unclogged streets, nobody parking on their street, the ability to get downtown in 20 minutes, and enough parking for every trip to the gym, Costco, 99 Ranch Market and Trader Joes.
Explain to them that $4,000 a month rental houses and $3,000 a month apartments will require perhaps four or five adults to split the rent, each with their own car. The less rentable housing that exists, the less apartments that are built, the more these rents will increase.
Victory Bl. east of Sepulveda, Van Nuys, CA 5/10/18
Why are some people sleeping in tents? Or cars? Or RVs?
Every political and social problem evaded ends up costing us in other ways.
Along Victory Boulevard, west of Sepulveda, as along many other streets, I witness the morning rush hour of single occupancy drivers sitting still as they wait for the light to change at Sepulveda, right in the midst of “Midvale Estates” where there are only single-family houses. If apartments cause congestion, why is this picket-fenced bastion of Ozzie and Harriet clogged?
As for parking, there are very few people who still park their car inside their garage. The garage is now a storage unit for boxes, belongings, etc. The cars that are once sat inside are now on the driveway, and perhaps the curb.
Sorry, garage is full at this time.
A tiny, white house is rented. And the people who live there have four cars, and none of them are parked inside the home.
There is also conspicuous consumption in this city, a style of showing off cars that means that vehicles are put outside where everyone can see you are making it with your BMW and Mercedes even though you haven’t held a full-time job in three years.
That is repeated all over Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States, yet many who live here cling to the vision that it should function like an efficient, low-density town in the Midwest.
The car should be everywhere, at our disposal every hour of the day, yet it should somehow disappear if it belongs to someone else.
When visionaries present a city of road diets, bike lanes, denser housing near transit lines, that’s when the panic starts.
And we go back to planning our lives around everything for the car. And idle in rage.
For the future we now return to the past.
Here in Van Nuys 
You must be logged in to post a comment.