General Info
Business & Theatre Owners in the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce formed
the idea of establishing a theatre and arts district in 1992 with support from L.A. Department of
Cultural Affairs. They chose "NoHo" as it not only distinctly revealed our location, but also plays off
the well-known "SoHo" Arts District of New York City.
Central to the new NoHo Arts District, located near Valley Village in North Hollywood, are
contemporary theaters, art galleries, cafes, and interesting shops. The area features more than 20
professional theatres producing new work and classics, diverse art galleries, public art and
professional dance studios. The district also features the largest concentration of music recording
venues west of the Mississippi.
The theater district is growing at a steady pace, including two new large venues that expand upon
existing theatres, the newly redesigned NoHo Arts Center (formerly the American Renegade Theatre),
and the redesigned Historical El Portal. They add to the existing 31 theatres located in and around
the NoHo Arts District. New mixed-use development, the NoHo Commons, is planned near the
NoHo Arts District's commercial core and subway station by Los Angeles developer J.H. Snyder
Company.
The $100-million, 292-unit loft apartment project by Snyder is the first segment to be completed of
NoHo Commons, part of a "transit village" rising at the terminus of the Metro Red Line subway and
the Orange Line busway. Also planned are hundreds of other apartments, condos, stores and other
developments, including a high school.
Other projects nearby include NoHo Tower, a 15-story apartment building with 191 units at
Lankershim Boulevard and Cumpston Street that is complete, and the historic North Hollywood train
depot at Lankershim and Chandler boulevards, which is getting restored to its 1920s condition. The
old train depot sits on land owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, across from the
Metro Red Line subway station and next to the termination of the Orange Line bus line.
Transportation
The North Hollywood Metro Subway station opened in June 2000 after 13 years in the planning.
Close to half a million people took advantage of free rides on the 17.4-mile Red Line subway in its
first weekend in operation. The station is the starting point for the Red Line Metro system, which cost
$4.5 billion to construct.
The L.A. county Transportation Commission took four years but finally in 1990 approved the subway
station connecting North Hollywood to the Metro Rail from downtown. That followed the Los Angeles
City Council unanimously endorsing the Valley Metro Rail extension plan. The subway features a
route from Union Station to North Hollywood.
The tunnel to connect the Metro Red Car's Hollywood leg to the San Fernando Valley extension cost
$136 million. It included the cost of digging a tunnel under the Santa Monica Mountains. The
tunneling work was done by a Traylor Brothers/Frontier-Kemper joint venture. The Santa Monica
Mountains Conservancy and the Sierra Club had fought to prevent the tunneling but ultimately lost.
Environmentalists were concerned that the removal of billions of gallons of ground water might affect
springs, wildlife and vegetation.
Tunneling from North Hollywood for the subway started in 1995. Workers dug 70 feet deep using
specialized tunneling machines to scoop out chunks of earth. Work progressed an average of 50 to
200 feet daily, performed by work crews round-the-clock six days a week. The machines used bore
through soil that once lined the bottoms of ancient oceans.
The two tunnels between the North Hollywood and Universal City stations were a total of 10,541
feet. The cost of building the two tunnels was $65.4 million and involved 250 workers. Experts
estimate the costs of the same work in 2007 would be well over double if not triple given the
increased costs of construction materials and labor.