Mini-Mall Moratorium Gains Council Support

After three years of debate, the Los Angeles City Council strongly signaled Wednesday that it would impose a six-month moratorium on the construction of so-called mini-malls.

The council’s 12-1 vote--another step for the city’s “slow growth” movement--also calls for the development of new design guidelines for the small commercial centers. The measure must be affirmed in a final vote next week and be signed by the mayor for it to become law.

The planned moratorium is criticized by developers as a blow to small builders and merchants striving to achieve “the American Dream.” But proponents like Councilmen Michael Woo, Hal Bernson and Zev Yaroslavsky said the ban is long overdue, noting that hundreds of the small, quick-stop shopping bazaars have sprouted across the city since the mini-mall debate began three years ago.

As their numbers have multiplied--spawning more parking lots, fast-food emporiums, doughnut shops, video stores and dry cleaners--so have complaints that the centers are aesthetic blights that erode neighborhood character by generating traffic, litter and crime, council members said. In neighborhood meetings, mini-mall has become a buzzword that triggers instant ire, Yaroslavsky said.

The moratorium ordinance defines “mini-mall” as commercial developments that are 65,000 square feet and smaller, having buildings within 10 feet of the property line and parking between the structures and the street.

The council first acted to curb mini-malls in February, 1986, when it adopted a Bernson ordinance that required landscaping and more parking and limited development in residential areas. That ordinance--18 months in the making--proved inadequate, Bernson said.

The anti-mini-mall crusade caught on this year. In April, Mayor Tom Bradley and Planning Commission President Dan Garcia joined the movement, announcing plans for the mini-mall moratorium that was endorsed Wednesday.

More recently, Woo successfully sponsored a moratorium in his Hollywood-area district in late May. Earlier this week, Councilman Richard Alatorre won approval for an Eagle Rock ban affecting a one-mile stretch of Colorado Boulevard between Eagle Vista Drive near the Pasadena boundary and Eagle Dale Avenue.

Yaroslavsky, co-sponsor of the successful Proposition U slow-growth initiative and a probable challenger for the mayor’s job, blamed the Bradley Administration and the Planning Commission for slow reaction to the mini-mall phenomenon. “The city has been asleep at the switch for a long time about mini-malls,” he said.

When Bernson’s ordinance was passed 16 months ago, several other restrictive amendments were proposed by council members but became stalled in the Planning Commission and Planning Department, Yaroslavsky said.

‘Conscientious Effort’

“That ordinance languished until now. . . . The president of the Planning Commission believed that mini-malls were great for entry-level businesses,” Yaroslavsky asserted. “There was a conscientious effort . . . to promote mini-mall development.”

When Yaroslavsky asked city staff how many mini-malls have been developed in the city, the staff was unable to provide an answer. “I would believe it’s in four figures citywide,” Yaroslavsky added. “And now--on June 24, 1987--now we’re going to take care of mini-malls? . . . It’s too late.”

Commercial developers said Wednesday that the mini-malls provide boot-strap business opportunities for minorities in general and immigrants in particular.

Paul Pensig, a lawyer for La Mancha Development Co., a major mini-mall developer, pointed to a recent survey by The Times that found that the city’s white residents largely favor growth restrictions and that minority residents favor more development. Pensig said he did not consider this a racial issue, but an economic one.

Several council members took issue with Pensig. Braude said “such divisive racial comments” are both “unqualified and undignified.”

“My experience,” Woo said, “has been that this is one of the few issues that unite constituents from all ethnic groups. . . . I don’t think there’s anything about the American Dream that says for-profit development can destroy the quality of a neighborhood.”

Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who cast the only vote against banning mini-malls, said the measure would penalize small businesses and developers.