Mini-Mall Wins Group’s Blessing

A citizens’ committee formed to help Los Angeles city planners control development along Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock last week gave its support to a developer’s request to be exempted from a ban on mini-malls along the commercial street.

But a community group that opposes the request from Soviet Armenian shoemaker-turned-developer George Boiadjian will fight his plan at every step, a spokesman said.

“We will do whatever we have to do, go wherever we have to go to make sure this mini-mall does not get built,” said George Goldsmith of The Eagle Rock Assn.

In spite of opposition from that organization, the Eagle Rock Citizens Advisory Committee, formed in January by City Councilman Richard Alatorre, voted 7 to 4 last Thursday to support Boiadjian’s request. The committee will forward its recommendation to Alatorre along with a list of suggested modifications to the landscaping and design of his proposed mini-mall.

Boiadjian plans to demolish the 1922 masonry building which houses his shoe store and several other businesses and construct a two-story, 1,100-square-foot shopping center on the site with parking on the side and in the front.

His plans clash with deep-felt community concerns about the future of Colorado Boulevard, a wide street lined with older buildings but increasingly interspersed with gas stations and modern shopping centers marked by garish signs.

Eagle Rock activists, many of whom own homes in the quiet residential neighborhoods directly behind Colorado Boulevard, last year won their long battle for adoption of the moratorium which is designed to prevent the construction of any more mini-malls until a specific plan can be developed for the area.

Boiadjian, who purchased the building six months before the moratorium was passed, filed the first request for an exemption, basing his claim on hardship.

Alatorre spokesman Brad Sales said the councilman will consider the committee recommendation and write a letter to the City Council Planning and Environment Committee outlining his stance on the hardship exemption request. Eventually Boiadjian’s request will go to the council for a vote.