(Burbank, CA ­ October 23, 2001) A bus shelter that expands to include a coffee shop and newspaper stand. A bridge that serves as a civic gateway for motorists entering Hollywood and provides a spot for tourists walking across Highland Avenue to get information about local attractions. Flat rooftops transformed into gardens or bustling cafes.

Woodbury University architecture students believe these ideas could revitalize the 12-block Yucca Corridor neighborhood in Hollywood and create a stronger sense of community.

An exhibition featuring the concepts of Woodbury students is now underway at the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency, 7022 Hollywood Blvd. The display is open to the public until November 30. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Inspired by a challenge from the property owners and managers who make up the Yucca Corridor Coalition, students in associate professor Jeanine Centuori’s class decided that "beautifying" the area meant creating public spaces and programs for the neighborhood. The Yucca Corridor currently features few public spaces or amenities, a condition Centuori describes as typical for urban neighborhoods across the country.

"Public spaces are in decline. They’re simply disappearing," she says.

Centuori advocates turning these underutilized and often decrepit spaces into informal gathering areas for a few neighbors or places to hold civic meetings. The areas also can be used for vending booths that encourage interaction among neighbors or for displays of local art or community notices.

Marginal spaces, according to Centuori, can be anything from gaps between two apartment buildings to parking lots to medians to blank walls along sidewalks. Some of these spaces may be hidden within a property, such as a light well within an apartment building or a tucked away piece of land that is too small for legal building.

Embracing this idea, the Woodbury architecture majors began thinking of ways to use existing marginal spaces in the Yucca Corridor. Along with the bus shelter, bridge and rooftop spaces, ideas include:

• temporary spaces where farmers markets, celebrations and performances could be held.
• mobile carts for the sale of clothing, food, crafts, jewelry and body art.
• small, ecologically-sound housing units -- designed to accommodate a transient population of young people -- at the fronts of unsightly parking lots.
• temporary structures on empty lots awaiting development that would include first-floor telephones, newsstands and amenities for pedestrians, with second-floor cafés overlooking the street.

Woodbury students participating in the project are Jeffrey Cary, Christopher Courts, Adrian Iniguez, Richard Grossi, Andrew Hedin, Jeremiah Sugarman and Charles Ward III.

In addition to the student project, Centuori and artist Russell Rock of UrbanRock Design in Los Angeles and Kim Shkapich, director of exhibitions at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, are working on a formal two-year study of the area’s marginal spaces. The project is funded by $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Centuori’s team is now surveying the area for these marginal sites and public meetings for the Yucca Corridor’s 18,000 residents will be held in the future at Woodbury’s Center for Community Research and Design in Hollywood. The forum will allow residents to talk about their needs of their community, offer input on hidden spaces and discuss the uses for these sites. Design solutions will then be drawn and modeled, with a book eventually published on the two-year project.

Founded in 1884, Woodbury University is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Southern California. An accredited, nonprofit university, Woodbury is located on a 22-acre residential campus in Burbank and offers bachelor's degrees from the School of Architecture and Design, Business and Management, and Arts and Sciences. Woodbury also offers a master of business administration as well as weekend and evening study for working adults. A San Diego campus was established in 1998 to offer bachelor of architecture degrees.