NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Hearings Slated for Mall Expansion

Public hearings will be scheduled for September on plans to expand and upgrade the aging Laurel Plaza mall in North Hollywood, according to developers.

Everett Shine, vice president of Forest City Development, said the hearings will come nearly five years after the $150-million project was originally proposed.

“It’s taken a lot of design and detail changes to make it attractive to the community,” Shine said. “It’s going to take a lot of public support to be approved.”

According to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Planning Commission, the environmental impact report for the project was opposed by individuals and homeowner groups when it was circulated in December, 1991. A final environmental impact report was issued last fall.

In addition to a three-level, million-square-foot shopping mall with three new department stores, the proposal includes 5,400 parking spaces and room for a 10-story office tower.

The existing mall is a one-level, 26-year-old structure that houses 30 stores anchored by a Robinsons-May department store.

Developers plan to relocate Laurel Hall School to make room for the mall. An $8-million school will be built across the street next to the Emmanuel Lutheran Church, which owns the school, in exchange.

Robert Carcia, president of a group called Slow The Overdevelopment Process (STOP), lives one block from the mall. Like many residents and homeowner groups that are opposed to the project, Carcia believes the proposed expansion will destroy the neighborhood.

“The project is simply too large to be put in a bedroom community of this stature,” Carcia said. “We are opposed to the height and the massiveness of the project.”

Carcia said that his goal is to persuade developers to lower the height of the new buildings and contain the expansion to the existing property, rather than using the five additional acres that belong to the school.

Dates for the public hearings have not been set.