UPS Picks Sylmar Site for Distribution Plant

United Parcel Service, which dropped plans to build a package distribution center on the former San Fernando Airport site because of conflicting San Fernando city plans for the property, instead will build the center blocks away in Sylmar, the company announced Monday.

The $10-million UPS center will create 400 jobs, UPS said. Company officials said they intend to fill the new jobs, full- and part-time positions paying from $7.15 to $14.50 an hour, with local residents.

Construction of the 236,000-square-foot package center will begin in July on 30 acres of a 165-acre parcel. About 85 trucks will operate from the center, which is scheduled to open in early 1986, UPS said.

Land Donation to Conservancy

A large part of the 165 acres, at the end of Arroyo Street, northeast of Gladstone Avenue, is a hill area. At least 20 acres of the property will be donated to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and become part of the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor, Los Angeles Councilman Howard Finn said at a press conference announcing the UPS project.

The corridor is a network of hiking and riding trails that planners hope will ring the San Fernando and La Crescenta valleys.

UPS began looking for an additional distribution site in the San Fernando Valley about 18 months ago, when it became clear that its distribution center in Van Nuys had reached its capacity. At that time, 187 trucks were making a daily average of 57,000 pickups and deliveries, according to George S. Chapman, metropolitan Los Angeles division manager for UPS.

“There is no room to expand,” Chapman said of the Van Nuys facility.

Shopping Center Planned

Last August, UPS entered into a tentative agreement to purchase 52 acres of the former San Fernando Airport site from the F. Patrick Burns estate. But San Fernando city officials, who designated the land for redevelopment in 1983, said they were unwilling to commit the parcel to industrial development.

San Fernando officials are determined to turn some of the old airport land, the last big undeveloped parcel in the city, into a shopping center, which would generate sales tax revenue. A recent study commissioned by San Fernando showed that the surrounding population could support a 30-acre shopping center.

Although the City of San Fernando does not own the land, it can control what is built there through zoning. The land is now zoned for quasi-public uses, meaning schools, airports or government buildings. Any new development likely will require a change in the zoning.

Alternative Sites Found

Chapman said UPS realized that there wasn’t going to be enough land at the San Fernando Airport site for the project it envisioned.

When Los Angeles city officials learned of the difficulties UPS had in negotiations with San Fernando, they quickly found three alternative sites in the northeast Valley, said Bradford Crowe, director of the City Economic Development Office.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who attended the press conference at the project site, said city officials thought it was important to keep the UPS center in the area because of “the number of jobs that will be located in this section of the city.”

Crowe said the city building-permit process, which often drags on for months, was completed in three weeks in this case.