In Irwindale, Big Plans for ‘The Pits’ : Development: Officials set out to change city’s image. The plan is to fill in gravel quarries for commercial-industrial use.

Known for most of its 33 years as the “gravel capital of Southern California,” Irwindale is switching from an industrial economy to one based on commercial land development. Or, at least, city leaders hope so.

Already, such players as Home Savings of America and Miller Brewery have major operations in the San Gabriel Valley city. Now Irwindale, population 1,100, wants to woo more businesses and profit from the property taxes.

There’s only one problem: The gravel pits that long served as the city’s lifeblood have left it looking more like a pocked moonscape than a site for major commercial growth.

“That’s what they call us . . . ‘The Pits,’ ” said Charles Martin, Irwindale city attorney and clerk.

But the first signs that the Irwindale landscape may change surfaced last week, as quarry owners told City Council members of long-range proposals to reclaim eight of the community’s 19 active and inactive pits.

The most concrete plan would transform a 130-acre site into a multimillion-dollar industrial park ready for commercial building by early next year. On the site of what once was a massive hole in the ground will rise a $50-million, carefully landscaped complex of two-story office buildings and warehouses, said the quarry’s owner, CalMat Co.

CalMat also owns Irwindale’s most famous gravel pit--the one where the city once planned to build a stadium to lure the Los Angeles Raiders pro football team. Eventually, the company plans to fill and develop “Raider Crater,” as the locals call it, too.

City Planner Carlos Alvarado said the same factors that would have made Irwindale a suitable site for a stadium will make it an attractive commercial center. Located near four freeways, it is “ideally situated,” he said.

City officials hope to get about $2 million in annual tax revenue from businesses that locate at the 130-acre CalMat site. Much of that will go to the community redevelopment agency. Currently, that pit generates $1,000 a year in property taxes, said Jerry Weber, vice president of CalMat Properties, a subsidiary of CalMat Co.

Though Irwindale had 12 pits in operation at the height of demand in the 1960s, only eight remain active. Of those, four are expected to stop mining within a year, said civil engineer Willie Lockman, whose company, Lockman & Associates, has served as a consultant to the city on the gravel industry.

“Commercial and light industry will be the future of the city,” said Martin, formerly Irwindale’s city manager. “It is our hope that the pits will one by one develop.”

So eager is the city for this to happen that it has required owners of the four mines that are winding down to refill the sites into usable land, a move that has angered some pit owners.

By forcing mine owners to develop their land, the city is gambling at the owners’ expense, said William Capps, an attorney for United Rock Products, which operates three pits. By the time the pits are refilled, he said, there may not be a need for so much commercial space.

“If the city is wrong, the city doesn’t lose anything,” Capps said. But the property owners investing in construction could face economic disaster if the vision fails.

Though city officials expect many of Irwindale’s pits to eventually become commercial property, the process of refilling such sites can take years. Except for one pit owned by United Rock Products, which is near a still-operating mine and can therefore be filled with that pit’s waste, finding enough fill will be difficult, Lockman said.

“There’s going to be tremendous competition for fill,” Lockman said, adding that those pit owners who are able to fill their quarries first could make large profits by being the first to develop their land.

But, according to Martin, one thing is certain: “It took 80 years to make all those holes. It’s going to take a while to fill them up.”