Panel Rejects Project, Developer Plans Appeal : Concern Over Traffic, Crime Derails Proposed Gardena Shopping Center

The Gardena City Council will be asked to decide whether a shopping center proposed for Redondo Beach Boulevard would bring too much crime and traffic to the neighborhood before it makes a decision on granting a permit for the project.

Voting on the Galaxy Mall project this week, the city’s Planning Commission split 2 to 2, in effect denying approval, but a representative of the developer said he would appeal to the council.

Citing the project’s potential for providing jobs and increasing sales tax revenue, Planning Commissioners Roger Uchida and Ryo Komae voted in favor of the project. Commissioners Bruce Dutton and Banks Bowling voted against it, and Commissioner Arthur Johnson was absent.

“I think it’s the wrong project for that spot on account of the traffic,” said Bowling, chairman of the commission. He said streets are already crowded because of traffic from the Roadium Open Air Market, a swap meet in Torrance across the street from the proposed mall.

The mall’s developer, Mike Su of Gardena-based Galaxy Investments, was in Taiwan and unavailable for comment. His representative, Edmond J. Russ, said that Su would appeal and that the council could hear the appeal within a month.

Early Protests

Since last May, when plans for the Galaxy Mall were presented to the commission, residents have protested that the project would lower property values and generate crime and traffic, overrunning their largely residential community and exacerbating traffic on Redondo and Manhattan Beach boulevards.

Residents, as well as the owners of the Roadium, have also charged that the project is not a mall but a glorified swap meet.

In recent months, residents in other areas of the city have complained that there are too many swap meets in Gardena, prompting the council to amend the Municipal Code so that proposed “covered malls” larger than 5,000 square feet in commercial zones must obtain a conditional-use permit, which requires city approval. The change in the code came after a developer tried to turn a grocery store into a shopping center where independent vendors would rent stalls.

Under the ordinance, which took effect in May, the Galaxy Mall project would be permissible if the city grants a permit.

Original plans called for construction of a 190,000-square-foot, 2-story building that would house 550 shops and restaurants. Russ said the mall has been scaled down to 503 shops and 25 restaurants. The project would have underground parking and its own security force.

But residents Bruce and Helen Carson, who have lived in Gardena for 14 years, said the project is too big for the community to support.

‘Snowballed’ by Size

“We’re not against development,” Helen Carson said. “The size just snowballed us.”

“We would much rather see high-quality housing,” Bruce Carson said.

Resident Phyllis Hart said the project would “attract crime. . . . I don’t believe their hiring of security guards is going to protect the neighborhood the way we want it protected.”

Some residents also expressed doubt that tenants could be found for the mall, given its proximity to the Roadium and competition from other large shopping centers in the South Bay, Bruce Carson said.

He said there are already enough new shopping centers being built in Gardena, including the 170,000-square-foot Gardena Gateway Shopping Center near the Artesia Freeway and a 65,000-square-foot complex near Artesia Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.

The Roadium, a former drive-in theater that was converted to an outdoor swap meet, attracts as many as 15,000 customers and 500 vendors on weekends, said Dan Walker, a Torrance city councilman who is also a consultant for Pioneer Theaters, owners of the Roadium.

‘White Elephant’

Walker, one of the most vocal opponents of the mall, said the Galaxy project is a swap meet designed to lure customers away from the Roadium. If approved, he said, the project would be “a white elephant on one of Gardena’s most valuable pieces of property.”

“Basically, they’re attempting to build something that is going to create massive traffic problems in the community, simply because it’s not well thought out,” Walker said.

A traffic study by the Kunzman and Associates traffic engineering firm of Irvine, released by the city last Friday, found that the project would generate more than 14,000 vehicle trips during the week and more than 16,000 on weekends.

The study, ordered by the planning commission and paid for by the developer, also said traffic at the intersection of Redondo Beach and Crenshaw boulevards would be adversely affected, particularly on weekends, and that because the mall would have to accommodate as many as 550 employees, “the proposed parking supply may be inadequate.”

But Russ said Su envisions a mall much like the South Bay Galleria but with “smaller stores, little shops like bookstores, nail shops for the ladies, jewelry shops.”

Russ said the project is not a swap meet but a mall with tenants who will either buy space or lease it on a yearly basis.