Fire Dept. to Use Site for Training

Five years after the city proposed to build a police station at the former General Motors plant in Panorama City, Los Angeles officials said Wednesday they will use most of the site instead for a training center for Fire Department recruits.

Battalion Chief Roy Prince said the project is critical to the Fire Department because its training facility in North Hollywood is cramped and outdated.

A larger, state-of-the-art school is “very important to the quality of recruits we put out,” Prince said. “It allows us to bring a more technological training to them.”

The training center would use about three acres of the five-acre parcel, and a new fire station would take up another acre. Funding for both projects was provided by a bond measure approved last year by voters.

The Fire Department project would leave one acre for the Los Angeles Police Department to use as headquarters for the Valley Bureau and traffic divisions, although that project has yet to be funded.

“It’s just a matter of us getting the money,” LAPD Sgt. Patrick McAree said.

City Council members, who received the first formal briefing on the $27.4-million project Wednesday, said it addresses the public safety priorities of the central San Fernando Valley.

Council President Alex Padilla, whose district includes the site, said architects will map out the property to ensure there is sufficient room for future police offices.

“We will find the money somewhere because we need these facilities,” Padilla said.

He and other council members said the city may have to go back to the voters for another bond measure to finance the police facility at the former GM site.

However, some community leaders criticized the city for indecision that has left the five acres undeveloped four years after the motor company donated it to the city.

The rest of the former auto-making site has been redeveloped into The Plant, a large shopping center, and an industrial park.

“It’s the typical story of downtown misleading the public,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. “We were promised a police presence there when they decided to put alcohol outlets in [The Plant].”

Initially, LAPD officials studied the site for a sixth Valley police station, but later decided it was too close to the Van Nuys station. Now, the city has funded a plan to build the sixth station on Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills.

Schultz said the purchase of private land in Mission Hills was a waste of taxpayer money because the city already had the GM parcel.

Battalion Chief Prince said design work will begin this month on the training center and fire station, both of which should open in 2004.

In addition to a fire training tower and building facades, the center will include computerized classrooms for recruits.

Once the center is complete, the old facility on Laurel Canyon Boulevard will be converted for in-service training, he said.

Another new recruit training center is to be built in South-Central Los Angeles, although a site for that project has not been secured.