COVER STORY : NoHo : With theaters, cafes and a hip atmosphere, North Hollywood may become the ‘Melrose of the Valley.’

It may take a discerning eye to see them, but there are signs that suggest North Hollywood is poised to become a lively arts and entertainment district.

Some of the area’s business leaders and community officials envision the crossroads of this San Fernando Valley community--Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards--turning into the “Melrose Avenue of the ‘90s” or the “Melrose of the Valley.” They are referring, of course, to the street in Los Angeles between La Brea and Fairfax avenues that transformed itself into a bustling, hip shopping and restaurant district in the early 1980s.

Others have chosen even grander sights. The first act of a new cultural affairs committee formed in late September under the auspices of the Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce was to officially name the area, “the NoHo District,” a twist on SoHo, the arty, avant-garde section of New York City.

Did you just exclaim, “Who are they kidding?” This reference may seem humorous now, but in recent years, forward-looking theater directors, restaurateurs and community arts activists have established playhouses, cafes and art exhibit space in North Hollywood.

They are working independently and together to rejuvenate a commercial core filled with not only auto repair, auto body and auto parts shops, but also recording studios, and film and television production and post-production facilities. Perhaps they see promise in an area scheduled to receive the last subway station on Metro Rail’s Red Line around the year 2000.

At the crossroads of Lankershim and Magnolia sits The Academy, a multiuse development that opened last year. It is home to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with its 600-seat state-of-the-art theater and its Hall of Fame Plaza. Sculptures of television greats, including Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Hope, are prominently displayed around the outdoor plaza, which is open to the public.

“We brought an element to the area that never existed there before,” said TV academy president Leo Chaloukian. “People who have never been in the area and had no reason to be there are now commuting to the area.”

Combining the TV academy and the plaza with housing, shops and an office tower, The Academy development functions as a community gathering place for events ranging from film presentations and blood drives to the recent series of free concerts on the plaza, “Music Under the Stars.” The monthly concert series will resume in January on Sunday afternoons. The development also serves to encourage other business activity in North Hollywood.

A local entrepreneur established his place in revitalizing the community even before The Academy opened. “I looked at the area and saw some of the potential,” said Kevin McCarney, owner of Poquito Mas, a small Mexican restaurant near the Limelight Playhouse on Magnolia that cooks up not fast food, but “fresh food as fast as we can serve it,” he said. There is also a Poquito Mas in Studio City.

McCarney has lived in North Hollywood for almost 25 years. He refurbished an old coffee shop and opened his restaurant there two years ago. He has also paid for two bus benches on the northeast corner of Vineland Avenue and Magnolia. One directs people to Poquito Mas. The other says: “Look out Melrose! Magnolia Boulevard is soon to arrive.”

Surrounded by its more glamorous neighbors--the Disney, Warner Bros. and NBC studios in Burbank; Universal City up on the hill to the south, and the CBS Studio Center in Studio City--North Hollywood is one of the oldest communities in the Valley. It thrived with retail businesses along Lankershim Boulevard before residential and commercial development of the Valley expanded westward in the 1960s, and North Hollywood’s main street began to decline. Indoor shopping malls opened nearby, forcing many mom-and-pop shops out of business, and the area lost its vitality.

In 1979, the Los Angeles City Council established its first redevelopment project in the Valley--in North Hollywood. Bounded by Cahuenga Boulevard on the east, Tujunga Avenue on the west, Hatteras Street on the north and generally Camarillo Street on the south, the project area contains mostly residential, but also commercial and industrial structures. Among the goals of preserving and strengthening the residential neighborhoods, the redevelopment plan calls for the revitalization of the area’s commercial core.

The plan has met some opposition. A vocal group of North Hollywood residents and property owners has continually protested the agency’s taxing and land-seizure powers. But since the CRA began operating in North Hollywood, the City Council has been supportive of its work.

“Joel Wachs was the councilman for this district when this plan was formulated and redevelopment was established in North Hollywood,” said Jerry Belcher, the project manager for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency in North Hollywood since the plan was adopted in 1979.

“He’s always been very arts conscious. He introduced a motion that was adopted at the time our plan was adopted which said that in North Hollywood, 1% of all the tax increments--the property taxes that we get to do redevelopment--should be devoted to financing cultural and artistic facilities.” Councilman John Ferraro, who now represents a majority of the redevelopment area, has been equally supportive, Belcher said.

“So far, we’ve built up a little kitty--more than $500,000--and we haven’t spent any of that money, although we have committed $250,000 of it to the restoration of the Lankershim Arts Center,” Belcher said.

The Lankershim Arts Center is located on Lankershim Boulevard in an Art Deco building with Streamline Moderne features. The building has been declared a cultural landmark by the city and is considered one of the key components of the budding cultural district.

Earl Sherburn, a community arts director for the Cultural Affairs Department, was hired in 1986 to, among other things, get the Lankershim Arts Center open in the building originally built for the Department of Water and Power in 1939. Abandoned since the DWP moved out in the late-1970s, it was occupied by pigeons and homeless people.

In June, 1990, Phase 1 of the building’s renovation was complete and the center opened with an exhibition of work by artists from Mexico and local area artists of Chicano background.

“The renovation is almost a work of art in itself,” Belcher said.

One of the Valley artists in the show, Raul Gamboa, brought art out of the building and into the street. He painted the exterior of the Happy Hamburger--a burger stand in the next block that he frequented for lunch while he was painting a mural for the show--in his colorful graffiti style.

“When the owner said business was slow, I figured they needed a new look to liven it up. I told them maybe it will stand out and catch somebody’s eye,” Gamboa said. A couple of months later, the owner, who no longer owns the stand, did tell Gamboa that business had picked up.

The center is now closed for four to six months for the second phase of renovations. An elevator is being added, and the second story’s wooden floors are being refurbished so the center can conduct classes and provide exposure for performance and dance artists.

Just up the street from the Lankershim Arts Center, and down the street from The Academy development, is one of the newest additions to the area--the Eclectic Cafe. Unlike Eagles Coffee Pub across the street from The Academy, and the Iguana Cafe on Camarillo--which evoke some nostalgia for the small, funky coffee house of the ‘60s--the Eclectic is a spacious cafe of the ‘90s with a more spare but nonetheless inviting contemporary interior design.

Open since May, its hours are from 8 a.m. to “whenever,” or as late as 2 a.m. if he has customers, said owner Brian Sheehan. One can get coffee and pastries or a complete lunch or dinner there. Chef John Ruest specializes in light Italian cuisine.

The Eclectic also comes with a pool table, art exhibition space and live music Tuesday through Sunday nights, ranging from blues and jazz to acoustic pop. Poetry readings, he said, are a coming attraction.

“I would like it to be a showcase for local talent, new talent of any age,” said Carole Sheehan, Brian’s mother, who curates the Eclectic’s art exhibits. “They are so hungry to show their work, but where can they do it? The Eclectic is answering the need that has always been there.”

Sheehan, 30, who built the cafe himself and is also an actor, grew up in the Valley and attended the Oakwood School in North Hollywood. He said he opened the cafe “because I got tired of driving to the other side of the hill to find a hip, artistically comfortable place that has good food. I wanted the architecture as art to meet the art that is on the walls and the food, which is art.”

Previously, he had purchased a 1928 Spanish-style apartment building a few blocks from the Eclectic, and restored it. “I got to know the neighborhood, and I saw what was happening,” he said.

“I thought why not here, why not now? North Hollywood is in the middle of taking off. Rent is cheaper here. Actors and musicians live here. The theaters are here. There is a commitment to revitalization. We’re all hanging in there together, and doing it together.”

Others had come before to make their artistic mark on North Hollywood. Sculptor Ernest Shelton’s statue of aviator Amelia Earhart--who was a resident of Toluca Lake neighboring North Hollywood from 1928 until her disappearance in 1937--stands proudly at the corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Tujunga Avenue, outside the North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Library. Placed there in 1971, the statue was refurbished in 1988. A local committee is now raising money to have the fiberglass and steel likeness of her bronzed so that it can withstand the elements.

Artist Corita Kent’s gallery, Corita Prints, has been in North Hollywood for about 20 years. Kent was widely known for her “Love” postage stamp. Before devoting herself full-time to her art, she was also a nun and art department chairman at Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood.

Although she died in 1986, her prints are still available in the gallery on Vineland Avenue, which is open to the public from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. You can spot it next to a big red heart and the trademark “Corita” signature.

North Hollywood’s newest art venue can be found in its industrial section. Praxis Film Works, a state-of-the-art photographic visual effects production studio, brought in Jeff Phillips, curator of shows at the Directors Guild of America, in June to organize art exhibits throughout its 30,000-square-foot facility. Public tours can be arranged by appointment.

“Art energizes the environment, and creates a positive feeling,” said Praxis director Robert Blalack. He received an Academy Award for his visual effects on the film “Star Wars,” and also did visual effects work on “RoboCop” and “Airplane!”

“Before, we had posters or photographs from the films we worked on up on the walls. When the art first went up, it was like going to a different country. I wanted art that had a voice. I didn’t want wallpaper. It’s made a huge difference to clients in terms of their own feelings about working in this environment. It takes us out of commercial orientations, and makes for a looser, more playful creative environment. Their perception of the studio, of their own potential here, is heightened.”

Whether or not North Hollywood turns into the Melrose of the Valley, the area is undergoing an infusion of new cultural activities and venues--nine professional theaters are located here now, with others planned--that could provide the impetus for others to join them.

The future could be even more promising than some “NoHo” boosters imagine. Leo Chaloukian said the TV Academy is working on something now--which he is not at liberty to speak about yet, he said--that could have a “tremendous” impact on the community, significantly greater than the TV Academy itself.

More immediate and tangible though, the Chamber of Commerce’s cultural affairs committee is organizing a Dec. 3 fund-raiser called “NoHo Holiday ‘92” at Texaco Plaza in neighboring Universal City. The event will feature artists and performers from the NoHo Arts District. Proceeds will go to promote the area as a cultural and theater center.

“There have been a number of people who had the idea that this is the place for a cultural center,” said Jim Mahfet, the chamber’s executive director. ‘It’s an idea that’s been bouncing around for a long time. I don’t know if it’s the location, the price of housing or what it is.

“When a lot of cities do this kind of thing, you tend to see a development company come in, choose an area, and start to develop it. There’s no development company developing the area here. It is all divergent. It’s everybody just deciding this is a place to do this kind of thing.”

“People are hearing about us and coming and talking about doing different things,” the CRA’s Belcher said. “The economic climate today is not very encouraging, but I think when things open up, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities to do things. Hopefully, they will be doing them in a very careful and thoughtful way, so that we can have our arts and still have areas where newcomers can come in on low budgets and flourish.”