If the Valley Became a City...Would It Be Camelot?

There's been a lot of news about lately, on the city, state and congressional levels.

Many believe that the last time around, the "Valley got screwed in redistricting," as Stuart Waldman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association said recently.

Waldeman and others have pointed out that of the 12 state Senate and Assembly members who represent portions of the Valley, only three of those officials are Valley residents.

Back on Nov. 5, 2002, Measure F called for the creation of a San Fernando Valley city fully separate and independent of Los Angeles, and it came to a citywide vote. A slim majority of Valley voters actually approved the measure, but the rest of the city rejected the measure by a 2-1 margin.

But what if the measure had been approved?

Some interesting facts on this subject can be found in the book The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb, written by Kevin Roderick, who grew up in North Hollywood, in the area now known as Valley Village.

Here are some fun "City of San Fernando Valley" facts and quotes from the book and other sources:

• If Measure F had passed, with an estimated 1.34 million people, the San Fernando Valley city would have been the sixth-largest city in the United States behind New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles (which would drop to third), Houston and Philadelphia.
• The city would have been by far the largest in the country without its own professional sports team, or, for that matter, its own major professional sports stadium. In fact, it wouldn't even have had a minor league professional sports team.
• The new city also would have been by far the largest in America without a centralized "downtown" district of any sort. Based on the proposed boundaries, its tallest building would have been 10 Universal City Plaza, a mere 506 feet high. By comparison, the tallest building in Portland, OR, ranked the 30th-largest city in America, is 546 feet high. The tallest building in Minneapolis, the 48th-largest city in America, is 792 feet.
• "Detached from Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley would not become a great city, but a dormitory suburb pretending to have achieved urban status: a community whose signature cultural contribution, at least in terms of gross revenues, would be pornography."—Historian Kevin Starr, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece from 1998, also quoted in America's Suburb.
• "It’s hot, it’s barren, it’s vacuous. That may seem a little harsh, but ample parking is about all this vast suburban wasteland has to offer in the way of cultural enlightenment. The Valley’s threatened secession from L.A. would be a fiscal drain, but a net gain in other departments."—Danny Feingold, quoted in America's Suburb.
  
• The two main newspapers of Los Angeles took opposite views, and financial stakes, in Measure F. The Valley-based Daily News dedicated many stories and editorials to the secessionist movement, as well as donating $60,000 to the cause, while the the Los Angeles Times' editorial page was against secession and the publisher spent $40,000 for membership in a downtown-based group opposed to Measure F.
• A big theory that fueled the secessionist movement was the belief that the Valley was not getting its fair share of the city's resources. For example, the Valley contributed $1.3 billion in taxes for the new subway system, and got only of one line, according to The Economist. Secessionists like to daydream about what that $1.3 billion could have done for the Valley.
• Jay Leno, host of NBC's Tonight Show, whose studio is located in the Valley, poked fun at the idea and suggested a few possible names for the new city. They included: Off-Ramp Acres ... Asphalt-by-the-Sea ... Smogadena ... Pornadelphia ... Newer Jersey ... Unknown Actorville ... and Little Appalachia.
• The actual name of the proposed city would have been voted for on the Measure F ballot as well. The choices were: San Fernando Valley, Rancho San Fernando, Mission Valley, Valley City and the very alluring name of Camelot.