Stall on Mini-Malls : Woo Seeks Moratorium on Downsized Shopping Malls

Claiming that mini-malls add blight to the community, Councilman Michael Woo is seeking a two-year ban on their construction in Hollywood and other parts of his district.

Woo introduced a motion Tuesday in the City Council calling for the ban. The council will not vote on the measure until after study by the city Planning Department and Planning Commission. A council vote is expected in June.

Standing in front of a mall at Yucca Street and Cahuenga Boulevard, Woo told a press conference Tuesday that the ban would allow the city time to formulate planning regulations to make malls more attractive and more accessible to pedestrian traffic.

“Mini-malls are a quick, cheap way to make money,” Woo said. “They are unattractive and serve commuters rather than the people in the surrounding neighborhoods.”

Woo said he will push for what he called a “pedestrian overlay zone” for his district so that new shopping areas will be geared to foot traffic instead of cars.

Such zoning would require mini-malls storefronts to be built next to the street with parking tucked out of sight behind the shops and stores, he said.

“It’s not necessary for the parking to be in the front to have a successful pedestrian-oriented development,” Woo said, adding that he has received complaints about the appearance of parking lots that face the street.

Placing the shops in the front of the malls and the parking lots in the back would encourage more pedestrian use, Woo said.

“The commercial development along Melrose Avenue (in) West Hollywood and Main Street (in) Santa Monica, shows that business and foot traffic is compatible and desirable,” Woo said.

To allow the unrestricted building of additional mini-malls would conflict with the goals of the city’s 30-year, $922-million redevelopment project for Hollywood, Woo added.

“The new malls are not necessarily the kinds of improvements we’re looking for,” he said. “There needs to be a balance with the needs of the neighborhood.”

The moratorium proposal drew a quick reaction Tuesday from the biggest mini-mall company in California.

“It smacks to me of something less than free enterprise and the American spirit,” said Marvin Levine, vice president of La Mancha Development.

“It won’t lend itself to convenience shopping,” Levine said. “Parking in the back could create a tremendous crime and burglary problem for shoppers and residents in the area.”

Levine, whose company has built 347 mini-malls since 1972, when it converted an abandoned Atlantic Richfield gas station in Panorama City into a strip of shops, said today’s small plazas are well designed. Most cost about $1 million and have about six stores and 15 parking stalls, Levine said.

“Retailers don’t want to invest their capital in an ugly store. They all want their own image, as does Mr. Woo,” Levine said.

Bill Welsh, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber has not taken a position on mini-malls. He said that he shared Woo’s concern about the aesthetics of the malls.

“Certainly, some of them could use some work,” he said. “I’m for anything that would make them prettier.”

Welsh said that he looks upon the malls as temporary, “a kind of holding action until the property can be improved more dramatically.”

Woo could provide no figures on the number of mini-malls in his district. Eric H. Roth, Woo’s planning deputy, said that the number of such malls in Hollywood is “substantial. All you have to do is drive up and down the main streets to see them.”