A Maturing L.A. Grows Up and In : Infill: Developers are now building in areas shunned in the past as single-family homes make way for multifamily projects.

It has happened over decades. But like many things in sprawling Southern California, it has drawn attention only when it affects a particular street, neighborhood or city.

In the Mid-Wilshire area, four old homes on Cochran Avenue are demolished to make way for 24 new condominiums.

In Eagle Rock, four-story apartment buildings now line a neighborhood that once had nothing larger than duplexes.

In Northridge, the homes along Zelzah Avenue are gone. Now across from Cal State Northridge, sits a row of two- and three-story apartment complexes.

These are all examples of “infill development,” where new construction is taking place on land that once was overlooked or where homes, and even small apartment buildings, are being replaced by townhouse complexes and apartment buildings.

Infill development, the vast majority of which are multifamily projects, is one answer to the region’s seemingly insatiable demand for more housing.

“Whether we like it or not . . . infill development provides opportunities to build the city without continuing our urban sprawl,” said attorney Dan Garcia, former longtime chairman of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission.

At the same time, infill raises important questions about where new housing should be built, and how much is too much. And those questions loom significant if Southern California is to continue to grow without further--and dangerously--overtaxing the municipal infrastructure--streets, sewers, water supply system and the like.

Nowhere is infill development--and its implications--more evident than in the city of Los Angeles, where densities in some areas already rival those found in Chicago, Philadelphia and even New York.

And there is no sign that the push toward higher density will diminish.

Indeed, under existing zoning, according to city planners, enough infill housing could be added to accommodate 1 million more residents in Los Angeles, which already has a population of more than 3 million.

“I keep thinking the infill will drop off any month now. But it hasn’t,” said David Lessley, who, as head of Los Angeles’ plan implementation division, sees the overall picture of development in the city. “It’s obviously here to stay.”

The signs are everywhere.

--In the city of Los Angeles, 92% of the new residential construction between 1980 and 1989 was in multiple units, according to Terry Bills of the population research unit of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department.

During the first six months of 1988, a staggering 99% of the city’s new residential construction was in multiple units, Bills said.

--In Los Angeles County, he said, 74% of the new construction since 1980 also has been in buildings of three or more units.

Those numbers, say regional officials and urban planners, prove that Los Angeles County is not just growing out; it is, they say, growing from within on land that has, in most cases, already been developed for decades with single-family homes.

“Riverside and San Bernardino led the nation last year in the construction of new single-family houses. Los Angeles County was second,” said Bills of the county’s population research unit.

“But in Los Angeles County, the new single-family housing was concentrated in a few areas like Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. The infill development was everywhere.”

Added Arnie Sherwood, director of community and economic development for the Southern California Assn. of Governments:

“The higher-density development is something that every big region experiences at some point. But I think that most people here are only now paying attention to it because of the congestion.”

But as Sherwood and others point out, infill development, particularly in Los Angeles County, began several decades ago and accelerated in the 1980s.

As large parcels of land became more and more scarce, builders in the 1960s returned to undeveloped or underdeveloped areas, constructing multifamily housing projects that would serve and capitalize on the region’s explosive growth.

Properties large enough for multiple units were gobbled up by developers, particularly along growing business corridors. So were scattered vacant parcels, even those on hillsides where topography and old construction techniques once made development more expensive than it was worth.

The wave of new apartment buildings, in particular, accelerated in the early 1980s with tax-exempt bond programs that allowed cities and counties to help developers by buying down interest rates, according to Ben Bartolotto of the Construction Industry Research Board.

“The bond program generated a lot of activity in the early 1980s. It and the old tax code, which offered generous deductions for apartment investments, were big factors in adding to the construction of apartments,” Bartolotto said.

Although the 1986 federal tax reforms placed severe limits on bond financing for multifamily units, Bartolotto said, the higher-density developments continue.

And those developments, he said, are driven by both the tremendous demand for more housing and the sheer economics of building in a region where land prices are as high as in Los Angeles.

“When you have land costs that rise substantially as they have in many suburban areas, especially the coastline, you look to alternatives and more density. That’s the only way the economics will work,” Bartolotto said.

Thus, in the city of Los Angeles, planners have in recent years seen a doubling or tripling of density in multifamily developments, according to Lessley of the city Planning Department.

“We are finding that a typical development will take down an existing apartment building with six or eight units and replace it with 24 or 30 units,” he said. “And in the last year or so, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of cases.”

In particular, he added, city planners have seen a rise in subdivision tract maps for new condominium projects.

“There are still a few tract maps for single-family development in areas like the West San Fernando Valley. But the vast majority are for condominiums,” Lessley said.

The volume of projects, he said, has led to frustration both for developers awaiting approval of their plans and city planners striving to balance development rights with the undeniable impacts of some higher-density projects.

“Frankly, I think we have a serious problem because of the age of the infrastructure in the city,” Lessley said. “We have problems right now with our sewer system, and there is an interim ordinance controlling permits. But there are also the problems of adequate landfills and the condition of our streets and roads.”

Those concerns, like infill development, are nothing new in the city of Los Angeles, Lessley said.

“The infill development has been going on in older parts of the city for some time. Even 15 or 20 years ago, it was an issue in the district plan for Mt. Washington, Eagle Rock and Lincoln Heights,” Lessley said.

“The new development began in those parts of Los Angeles that were largely inner-city or on hillsides. Years ago, the hillsides were passed over by developers because the land was too expensive, considering the cost then of technology to build on hillsides.

“At that time, the developers went to the San Fernando Valley and began building. About 15 or 20 years ago, we saw them going back with infill developments in areas they had passed over. But even then it was largely infill with single-family homes or lower-density multiple units. And that’s the big difference between then and now. Today, we have people taking advantage of existing zoning to build to the maximum density.”

The increasing density may be inevitable, given land costs and the region’s continuing attractiveness as a place to live. “It’s gotta happen,” said Garcia, the former Planning Commission president.

Said Garcia of infill critics: “The problem with the ‘Not Yet New York’ movement is that also means not yet Paris, not yet London, not yet any of the world’s great cities.”

But even those who see infill development as a sign of the Southland’s maturity acknowledge that the replacement of existing housing with higher-density projects has often been sloppy, with inadequate attention by builders and bureaucrats to aesthetics and the environment.

“In general, I am very supportive of infill development. I think it offers a lot of opportunities,” said Richard Peiser, director of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate Development.

“But it needs to be done in cooperation with community groups and needs to be sensitive to burdens that it places on areas that already have overburdened roads, sewer facilities and the like.”

One of many examples in the region, Peiser said, is the higher-density development occurring along Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles between Venice Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway.

“Because of the city’s desire to see more housing, we’re seeing infill apartments along that area that completely cover the lot and really destroy the ambience of the street,” Peiser said.

“And while the city may like it because it provides badly needed units, it will in the long run lead to deterioration of that community because it is overbuilt.”

Some builders, he added, are victims, not culprits, of such development.

“Many developers build to certain densities not just because they want crowded apartments--they don’t--but because the land cost is determined by how much can be built on the site,” Peiser said.

“So a builder along Crenshaw who wants to build something of less density can’t afford it. It might cost them $200,000 per unit for an eight-unit building compared to $50,000 per unit for something with 32 units.”

Perhaps nowhere are the consequences of infill development more stark and startling than along the Wilshire corridor between Westwood and downtown Los Angeles.

There, according to SCAG’s Sherwood, the population approaches 20,000 persons per square mile, a density close to New York City’s. And while urban planners suggest the Wilshire corridor is a logical place for higher densities, many are troubled by the design of projects being built or already constructed there.

“Infill projects are a natural consequence of a city’s growth and vitality. And in that sense they are healthy indicators,” said Alan Kreditor, dean of USC’s School of Urban and Regional Planning. “But they must be done with quality and sensitivity. Like sewing in a patch on a garment of rich texture, an infill development must look like it belongs.

“And Westwood is an example of where the pressure for densification has not been handled as sensitively as it might have been. There is a lack of architectural quality with many of the buildings. They seem insensitive to the community. They just don’t add to its character.”

To be sure, not all of the region’s infill development has been of a scale, design or quality that curses--r is cursed by--communities. Some have been recognized for their design.

One such is the 12-unit Silverview Condominiums built by developer Harvey Steinberg, whose 10-year-old firm, Inner City Planning and Development Inc., has built nothing but infill projects, all but one of them in Silver Lake.

The Silverview project, built in 1983, won mention in the book, “Architecture in Los Angeles” by David Gebhard and Robert Winter, was a development representative of Silver Lake’s concentration of first-rate architecture.

Other projects have been lauded for bringing affordable housing through higher-density development. An example is Griffin Glenoaks, a 324-unit condominium project in Pacoima that last year was honored as the top affordable housing development in the western states at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference.

The Cape Cod-style development, where units began at $72,000, was built by Griffin Homes, a Calabasas-based developer that has built more than 25,000 homes in Southern California since its founding in 1903.

The 7-year-old Community Corp. of Santa Monica, a nonprofit developer, also has received accolades for an infill development known as OP43, a 43-unit cooperative in Ocean Park.

OP43 replaced older houses with two-story apartment buildings built in the California bungalow style. The apartments are built around central courtyards and to a scale that is compatible with its single-family neighbors.

“The Ocean Park project is the most sensitive infill development I have seen, a low-income, affordable housing project where great efforts were made to make sure the community did not object to its design or construction,” said Jackie Leavitt, an associate professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Cumulatively, of course, even the best designed infill developments will contribute to what some see as the nightmarish consequence of unrestricted high-density development.

“There is a given capacity for any piece of territory, and we have largely exceeded that capacity already,” said Ellen Stern Harris, executive director of Fund for the Environment and a former board member of the Southern California Metropolitan Water District.

“And until we come up with the technology ‘fixes’ for air quality, water quality and supply, transportation, etc., we have no business continually and mindlessly compounding the problem with higher-density development.”

Like many concerned with the increasing density, Stern Harris insists that immediate steps are needed to prepare the region for the results of higher-density development.

For example, she said, Los Angeles officials should impose a strict moratorium on new sewer hookups until the city reaches the storage capacity required to hold sewage for treatment after a storm.

“Right now, we’re in the fourth year of a drought, and yet in a gentle rain recently, we couldn’t handle the strain. So we had an 8-million-gallon spill of sewage that closed 18 miles of beaches,” she said. “Imagine what will happen when we get over the drought. With all this continued development and without adequate capacity, that sort of sewage spill could become a weekly event.”

Prof. Edward Soja of UCLA raises other concerns.

“It’s true some places have got to be densely developed, maybe with more dramatic infill than we have already. But that should include more low- and moderate-income infill,” said Soja, associate dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

“We must understand the larger scale of what is occurring, because however well-intentioned, this higher-density development has aggravated the housing situation because of the price and location of some infill,” he said.

“As a result, we have one of the worst housing crises in the nation. We have some of the most overcrowded housing in the country. . . . We have a Third World squatter settlement of perhaps 500,000 in the county who are living in garages or hot-bedding in hotels from week to week or month to month.”

A modest recent downturn in permits for infill development in Los Angeles County may slow, however slightly, the effects of higher-density development. But that downturn is measured against the astronomical pace of such development in the mid-1980s.

Infill development “will never end in the city of Los Angeles,” said Garcia, the longtime former chairman of the city’s planning commission, “because we are now in the process of redeveloping the city, not developing it.”