2 Sides Near Compromise on CityWalk Red Line Link : Transportation: A $20-million system would shuttle Metro Rail riders to Universal Studios under the agreement that officials hope to finalize.

Already behind schedule on a new stop in Universal City, county transportation planners are working feverishly with entertainment giant MCA on a compromise that would connect Metro Rail trains to the Universal Studios entertainment complex through a $20-million people-mover system.

Both sides hope an agreement can be put before the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority board today that would end months of deadlock over a new station site on Lankershim Boulevard.

MCA has lobbied hard to relocate the Red Line stop closer to its CityWalk attraction, but county planners say such a move would be too costly and time-consuming.

Under a compromise solution being brokered by city officials, the planned station would still be built on Lankershim but would empty onto the east as well as the west to accommodate passengers bound for Universal Studios. Those riders would take a new shuttle service uphill to the entertainment center.

MCA executives and county transportation analysts have embraced the compromise but were scrambling to hammer out a final agreement Tuesday.

“It’s dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” MCA spokeswoman Christine Hanson said. “We’re still working out some of the details.”

Transit authority analyst Judith Wilson said she was hopeful that the compromise could be presented to the authority’s board of directors today.

Officials are anxious to minimize delays in construction at the stop, scheduled to have begun this month but held up by the debate with MCA.

Representatives on both sides Tuesday declined to specify what issues remained to be resolved in reaching a final agreement.

But they said certain key points have been resolved, including MCA’s commitment to pay for the people-mover system, which could cost as much as $20 million.

The county would pick up the tab for the eastern station entrances and various roadway projects to ease traffic in the area and improve access to the Hollywood Freeway and the Universal Studios lot.

The compromise plan is backed by Mayor Richard Riordan, whose senior policy adviser, Ted Stein, has been instrumental in mediating the disagreement between MCA and the transportation authority.

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Last month, Riordan returned $2,759 in campaign contributions to MCA and its representatives so that he could vote on the issue as a transit authority board member. State law bars officials from participating in any decision involving firms or people who have contributed more than $250 within the last 12 months.

“He doesn’t want a conflict of interest on one of the major transportation decisions before the MTA,” said Riordan spokesman David Novak.

Novak said Riordan returned $1,751 to MCA lobbyist George Mihlsten, $751 to MCA itself and $257 to other individuals with ties to the multimedia concern.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, another transportation board member, said he, too, supports the new proposal.

“The people-mover connecting . . . the east side of Lankershim to the theme park will increase ridership,” he said. “This is a win-win for the community, MCA and San Fernando Valley residents anxious to have transit brought to them this century.”

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But Nick Patsaouras, Antonovich’s alternate on the board of directors, disagreed, saying the board has vetoed similar concessions to private companies in the past. “It’s the issue of fairness,” he said.

A final agreement would cap months of talks between MCA and the county over whether to stick to the Lankershim site or move the station half a mile southeast, onto MCA property beneath the Hollywood Freeway near Cahuenga Boulevard.

Both sides agreed that ridership would be higher with the MCA site, but county analysts believed the shift would incur a 21-month delay and $41 million in cost overruns.

Although MCA disputes those figures, MCA has acknowledged the need for extra funding and dispatched representatives earlier this month to Washington in hopes of drumming up federal dollars for the move.

Both sides hailed the compromise drafted by the city, because it satisfied two key demands in better serving the Universal Studios center and preventing cost overruns and delays.