Warner Center at a crossroads

The future of Warner Center, as well as how it came into being, is examined in today's Daily News, where reporter Kerry Cavanaugh found the area is at a crossroads.
Once hailed as a jewel of development and the "downtown" of the San Fernando Valley, Warner Center finds itself at a crossroads - torn between its urban ambition and suburban legacy.
On the drawing board in the 1970s, Warner Center was envisioned as a modern mini-city surrounded by suburban single- family neighborhoods. It would be larger than Century City but connected by mass transit and without the traffic gridlock.
The 1 -square-mile area evolved during the next 30 years, with a few high-rise commercial towers and blocks of low-slung offices and sprawling shopping malls.
Now, with the real estate boom sweeping California, there is new interest in Warner Center and visions of a dense mini- metroplis.