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October 4, 2011· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

What’s being built south of College of the Canyons?

By Jeff — Jeff Wilson

Two gigantic cranes in the heart of Valencia on Rockwell Canyon road between COC & CalArts:

What is being built here? A new ride that takes you all the way to Magic Mountain? The beginnings of a high speed rail line through the heart of Valencia? A crazy art project put on by some overachieving and scary-ambitious CalArts students?  A sphinx in the shape of Dr. Dianne Van Hook, supreme chancellor of COC perhaps?

Nah, I doubt it’s any of those things. The only construction project I know of on that site is the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which has been slated for that location for almost ten years.

You can be forgiven if you don’t recall this project. It’s been several years (like four or five) since I last saw a story about it. The LA Times first mentioned the project way back in 2002:

With the help of a wealthy film buff, UCLA is planning to consolidate the country’s second-largest media collection at a campus to be built in Valencia, university officials said Thursday.

The proposed 60-acre site for the UCLA Film and Television Archive was purchased by the Packard Humanities Institute, a nonprofit foundation in Los Altos headed by computer heir David Packard. Escrow on the land, bought from the Newhall Land and Farming Co., closed last month.

The nonprofit plans to build a new UCLA Film and Television Preservation Center on the site in the next few years to house the archive’s 27 million feet of newsreel footage and 220,000 films and TV programs.

The collection is currently spread among four sites on UCLA’s Westwood campus and at the old Technicolor building in Hollywood, on Cahuenga Boulevard, archive officials said.

The new facility would bring the collection together, and give its 63 employees a single, state-of-the-art place to work on film restoration and preservation, said Tim Kittleson, the archive’s director. It will also host a new master’s degree program in “moving image archiving studies,” which university officials said would be the first of its kind in North America.

A quick check on the ultra-simplistic Packard Humanities Website (seriously was it created with Notepad?) doesn’t even mention the project. And the UCLA Film & TV Archive website doesn’t show any updated information either.

But I’ve not heard any changes in ownership for the property so without any contrary information, I think it’s safe to assume this is the beginnings of the UCLA Film & TV archive.  It’s unlikely the facility be open to the public given the rare materials held inside, but in that Times article Bill Packard says he’d like to build a public screening room, which would be a real treat for us screen and quality-film deprived SCVers.

Comments (10)

  1. Coastal SageOctober 4, 2011 at 5:08 pm
    You can go to the planning and development counter at City Hall. They have an Assessor’s Map for the whole city, cross referenced to permits they’ve issued for varying projects. In the past, occasionally someone would pull a fast one, doing grading of hillsides in the city, without a grading and excavation permit issued to the real property owner, but it should be pretty hard to do that on a property which is so prominent.
  2. mikeOctober 4, 2011 at 9:09 pm
    If it’s UCLA, do they need city permits?
  3. Need for Involved CitizenryOctober 5, 2011 at 8:22 am
    No. UCLA is it’s own regulatory authority so there are no City permits required.
  4. mikeOctober 4, 2011 at 5:34 pm
    Have a look at the spiffy aerial view in google maps. I believe the bunker-like structure near the University Center, with driveways running to Rockwell and McBean, is the vault. “In 2008, thanks to an extraordinary and ongoing partnership with the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) and David Woodley Packard, the Archive’s nitrate film holdings were moved to a new state-of the-art $39 million vault facility in Santa Clarita, California. The new vault is the first phase in the Archive’s multi-year plan to build a fully developed preservation center with additional vaults for UCLA’s entire collection, as well as laboratories, workrooms and theaters with fiber-optic connections to UCLA.” http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/archive-history But, like WCH said, more to come soon. I’m guessing this is Phase 2.
  5. ToddOctober 4, 2011 at 8:09 pm
    Indeed you’d be correct. If you look at assessor’s maps you can see that there is a little parcel carved out. The owner of that parcel (neatly the size of the bunker) is listed as the Regents of the University of California. The Packard Institute owns everything surrounding, up to and bordering COC.
  6. mikeOctober 4, 2011 at 5:39 pm
    also, this: “By the time the Archive moves to its new headquarters in Santa Clarita in 2013, the Archive will feature a new digital laboratory for the digital scanning of film material.” http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/reimagining/ReimaginingCatalog.pdf
  7. Phil EllisOctober 4, 2011 at 8:16 pm
    I take McBean to the 5 every morning and have been seeing activity for several months – ever since they added the new driveway.
  8. PetzOctober 5, 2011 at 4:09 am
    Petz is building a new bunker.
  9. Phil EllisOctober 5, 2011 at 7:27 am
    They make nice wine cellars
  10. CCOctober 5, 2011 at 8:10 am
    bunker / grave, what’s the difference?

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