PLACENTIA : Zone Change OKd for Shopping Center

The City Council approved the first stage of a plan to construct a neighborhood shopping center on a Unocal oil-drilling and storage site.

About 60 residents filled council chambers last Tuesday to protest the proposal, arguing that it would increase traffic, noise and crime and that the city already has enough shopping centers. The center would be built on a 15.5-acre site on the east side of Rose Drive between Buena Vista Avenue and Alta Vista Street.

Even so, council members voted 4 to 1 to change the zoning from low-density residential to commercial, hoping that it will bring needed sales-tax revenue to Placentia. City officials have already approved development of more than 950 homes and condominiums on former oil-drilling and citrus-growing property.

“We have to look at the overall financial benefit to the city,” said Mayor Arthur G. Newton, who voted for the zone change.

Dennis Chapman, a representative of Unocal Land and Development Co. in Brea, said that residents in the southeast section of town have to drive across Placentia or go into Yorba Linda to shop at a supermarket. The center, scheduled to be completed in late 1993, would keep sales-tax dollars in Placentia, he said.

“Somebody has to pay for services that this bedroom community needs, and it’s through sales tax (that the city can do it),” said Joyce Rosenthal, the city’s director of development services.

But Lois Elmore, who lives in a condominium development near the property, said there are already enough supermarkets nearby, including a 74,000-square-foot Smith’s Food Market under construction in Yorba Linda at Valley View Drive and Yorba Linda Boulevard. She added that shopping centers in both cities have vacancies.

“What you already have are so many vacancies that do not pay sales tax,” she said. “You can overbuild and overdo a good thing.”

Other residents argued that the center would create traffic gridlock and excess noise.

“Any commercial development is going to impact us in a negative manner,” said Mildred Renaldi, who lives near the site. “I’m not sure it’s the highest and best use when it squeezes the last dollars out for Unocal.”

But Unocal officials said that traffic studies show that there would be only a minor effect on the area and argued that construction of the center would help improve air quality because neighborhood residents would be able to drive shorter distances for services.

Unocal will have to come back to the City Council for approval of its specific plans and blueprints for the center. Councilman Norman Z. Eckenrode, who voted for the project, called on planners to buffer the center with a greenbelt including berms, bushes and trees.

Eckenrode said that without the shopping center, two-story homes would probably be built on the property, angering nearby residents in one-story dwellings.

Still, Councilwoman Maria Moreno voted against the zone change, fearing that a shopping center would be more likely to increase crime than would new homes.