San Gabriel Shopping Mall Project Gets Tentative OK

In a decision that befuddled some veterans of the slow-growth war here, the City Council gave a preliminary go-ahead Tuesday to the development of a major shopping mall on the site of the former Edwards Drive-in Theater.

The council exempted the $40-million project from an existing moratorium on development, in effect giving Westminster developer Roger Chen the authority to begin demolition and to continue working with city staff in preparing plans for the 220,000-square-foot project.

The drive-in site on Valley Boulevard, which has stood vacant for 2 years, has been a major issue in the city for 1 1/2 years. A plan last year to build a hotel there led to both the formation of Citizens for Responsible Development (CFRD), a grass-roots slow-growth group, and a voter-initiated moratorium on most development in the city.

The City Council gave the go-ahead on a 4-0 vote. Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak was absent.

City planners and council members emphasized that they had not approved the developer’s preliminary plan, which calls for up to 50 stores, including a major supermarket, a large restaurant and a bank.

“They (the developer and his staff) still have to go back to the City Planning Commission with a provisional plan,” said City Administrator Robert Clute. The provisional plan, Clute added, must be followed with a precise plan, giving a list of potential tenants on the site. The provisional and final plans must be approved by the Planning Commission and the council.

“This is not approval to go ahead and develop anything,” said Chen spokesman Gary Meredith of the Tuesday vote. Meredith is a former slow-growth activist in San Gabriel and a founding member of the citizens group.

The vice chairman of the citizens group gave lukewarm support for the project’s exemption from the moratorium. “A waiver is fine, provided everything falls within the guidelines of the updated General Plan,” said Ryan Laughy.

Laughy, noting that slow-growth activists on the council were approving a development measure whose greatest proponent was Meredith, himself an outspoken slow-growth advocate, described the debate on the exemption as “irony with a capital I.”

Three of the current councilmen were elected as CFRD-endorsed slow-growth candidates and a fourth leader of the group was appointed to fill a vacancy.

Moratorium Extended

In a related move, the council voted to extend the development moratorium for a year, while the city rewrites its General Plan. The moratorium, which was overwhelmingly approved by the voters last December, had been scheduled to expire next month.

Though the moratorium did not originally cover the drive-in project, which had been in the works for more than a year, newly elected councilmen voted in May to include it.

Several members of the slow-growth group spoke against the plan Tuesday, citing traffic conditions on Valley Boulevard and Del Mar Avenue, which some said are already close to gridlock.

For example, Bob Winder described a recent 10-block drive across Valley Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare, during the evening rush hour. “I was at New Avenue at 5 to 7 and crossed San Gabriel Boulevard at 7:15,” he said. “Try driving through there at 5 or 6. You can’t do it.”

“This shouldn’t even be brought up for discussion,” said Dan Valenzuela. “The people have spoken.”

But Meredith, who had been an outspoken opponent of the drive-in development until he became Chen’s spokesman last May, argued that the slow-growth group had always supported commercial development on the site. He said that Chen needed the exemption to go after such potential tenants as Bullock’s and Nordstrom department stores. “You don’t go to the majors saying you think in couple of years you might have something for them,” he said.

Meredith acknowledged that traffic represented the project’s most difficult obstacle. But he argued that the flow was already there, because of other developments on Valley Boulevard. “At least we could turn some of the traffic into tax-generating revenue,” he said.

Sales Tax Revenues

The developer estimates that the project will bring $387,000 a year in sales tax revenues to the city.

The council granted the exemption with some strings attached. Among the conditions that it required were that the developer clean and fence the site within the next two weeks, prepare a revised traffic study and put together a supplement to its environmental impact report.

The council also warned that it could require the developer to scale down the project if it determined that traffic would be too great for the city to handle.

“The proposal as submitted is a maximum proposal,” said City Atty. Stephanie Scher.