Topics : ENVIRONMENT : Plans for Market May Be All Wet : The project would threaten the 7-acre Gardena Willows wetland, opponents say. Grocery store developers are willing to build elsewhere, but city’s OK is needed.

Environmentalists are having some success as they try to stop plans by the city of Gardena to build a market next to a wetland.

Smith’s Food and Drug Centers has indicated it will consider alternatives to the site at Artesia Boulevard and Vermont Avenue if the city and the developer are willing.

And developer John Vidovich, a partner at De Anza Properties in Sunnyvale, said that although he does not believe the 64,000-square-foot market will affect the adjacent 7.3-acre willow wetland, he is also willing to look at other sites in the city.

“We’re trying to do some economic revitalization for the area, but nobody wants to hurt the wetland, including me,” Vidovich said.

Opponents of the plan say noise, litter and runoff from the development would threaten the wildlife that inhabits the wetland, including ducks that rest there every winter on their migration from Canada to Mexico.

Known as the Gardena Willows, the patch of dense vegetation is all that remains of a vernal marsh that once stretched over 15 square miles of the South Bay.

“(The market) will box it in with development all the way around,” said Walt Wright, a consulting ecologist.

“You’ve got commercial development on the west side, you’ve got apartments and roads, and then you put a wall of a building all along the last side.”

Gardena resident Sherry Roberts is leading local opposition and has been joined by Torrance-based Friends of Madrona Marsh and the Harbor Park Advisory Board in Wilmington.

“We will pursue all legal means to prevent commercial development on one of the last remaining wetland areas in the South Bay,” said Frank O’Brien of the Harbor Park group.

The environmentalists argue that the market should be relocated and an interpretive center built on the acreage with $1 million the city recently received in Proposition A funds to enhance the wetland. The rest of the land should be left as a buffer zone, they say.

Meanwhile, city officials are divided on the development plan.

City Manager Kenneth Landau said an agreement with Caltrans to buy the eight acres for $3.74 million is in escrow and the city is intent on putting the market on that site.

But Councilman Jim Cragin, a longtime supporter of preserving the Gardena Willows, believes several sites on Rosecrans Avenue would be suitable for the market.