Planners, Foothill Residents at Odds Over Mall Project

A proposed Foothill Boulevard Shopping Center was called “a good project” by planners but “overdeveloped” by neighbors during a La Canada Flintridge Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night.

Commission Chairman John S. Wynton termed the plan for the 21,000-square-foot complex aesthetically pleasing, but asked the developer, Sabrina Properties of Glendale, to present the commission next month a detailed study of traffic and sewage impacts.

It was the second public hearing on the proposed Craftsman-style shopping center, to be located between Gould and Woodley avenues on Foothill Boulevard.

3 Buildings

The developer is seeking a city conditional use permit for the project.

Plans for the 12-store shopping center call for three free-standing buildings shingled with redwood, and a paved pedestrian mall. A two-level subterranean garage with room for 118 cars has residents living near the site concerned about traffic and noise.

“We’ve worked eight months on this with the developer and from our standpoint it’s a good project,” La Canada Flintridge Senior Planner Rob Jones said. “We’re just going to have to appease the neighbors.”

But some residents at the hearing said the developer has failed to address their concerns.

“I think quite frankly what we have here is a piece of property which is being overdeveloped by the addition of subterranean parking, and I don’t think the impact is being mitigated,” said Nelson Rising, who lives nearby. “This adds a whole new wrinkle to the traffic problem in the community.”

The site of the project is zoned for commercial development, but under the city’s Community Planned Development Zone ordinance, shopping centers of greater than 10,000 square feet require a conditional use permit.