County Urges Development on 34 Acres at Olive View

Hoping to generate revenue from Olive View Medical Center’s extensive grounds, Los Angeles County officials have recommended leasing a portion of it for commercial development.

A study, conducted by the office of the county’s chief administrative officer, has endorsed leasing a 34-acre site west of the Sylmar hospital for light industrial use, a low-rise office complex, a motel, restaurant or some combination.

The county’s plans for the property are remaining intentionally vague until the Board of Supervisors and the community are given a chance to comment, said Bill Wise, a management analyst in the CAO’s office.

“We’re not going to say this is what it has to be,” Wise said. “We’ll ask the developers what would work.”

County officials will discuss their proposed plans with neighbors at a July 19 meeting at the medical center. The purpose is to discover what types of development the neighbors would support or oppose, said Vicki Fouce, assistant chief deputy for Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

“We’d like to generate some revenue for the community and the county by placing something there,” Fouce said.

Reserving Judgment

Neighborhood residents are reserving judgment on the county’s venture until they hear more details, said Charlotte Bedard, vice president of the Sylmar Graffiti Busters, a community activist group.

The county has been interested in making money from the medical center’s undeveloped land for several years. Four years ago, the county proposed leasing land to a water slide amusement park, but community activists successfully lobbied Antonovich to kill the plan.

Neighborhood opposition also prompted the county to promise no other building plans would be pursued until the medical center had observed its second birthday. The moratorium was to allow time to see how Olive View, which opened in the spring of 1987, would affect surrounding neighborhoods.

The medical complex uses just 68 of the property’s 535 acres. The CAO determined that an additional 22 acres would be suitable for development, but recommended against it for now. The parcels would be more valuable if the county waited until the nearby 34 acres was developed and the zoning was changed from agricultural to residential.

The remaining property--411 acres--is mountainous, and community activists hope to keep it in a natural state. In its report, the CAO noted that a developer and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy are interested in the land.

The conservancy would like the county to preserve the hills for open space, said Sonia Thompson, a county senior analyst.