LAGUNA NIGUEL : Store Plan Rejection Appealed by Smith’s

Smith’s Food and Drug Centers Inc. wants the City Council to overrule a Planning Commission rejection of the company’s proposed development on a prime commercial parcel.

In a letter this week to Mayor Thomas W. Wilson, Smith’s argues that planning commissioners who voted against the plan for a 77,754-square-foot center at the northwest corner of La Paz and Aliso Creek roads did not have valid reasons for their opposition.

Smith’s real estate representative, H. David Nielson, states in the letter that the company’s proposal “meets or exceeds all site plan criteria used by the city for comparable commercial projects.”

Assistant City Manager Pam Lawrence said the City Council has 45 days to consider the appeal. The Planning Commission on June 16 deadlocked 2 to 2 on the project, with one abstention, in effect rejecting the plan.

Residents and City Manager Tim Casey have called Smith’s proposal for a 24-hour food center inappropriate for the 7.27-acre site, claiming it is not aesthetically pleasing and falls short of the mixed-use development envisioned for the property in the city’s General Plan.

Residents, the city staff and planning commissioners who voted against the food center proposal have argued that the community does not need and could not sustain another large grocery store and drugstore, with several similar stores existing or planned within a few miles of the site. Residents have also complained that the Smith’s center would take away business from smaller shopping centers in the area.

“It is not our intent to hurt other retailers,” Nielson responded in his letter of appeal, “but we are entitled to compete fairly and equally in the private marketplace.”