Furniture Store to Expand to Mall : Development: Angelus partnership’s plans include first supermarket in Boyle Heights since the 1992 riots.

To the delight of community leaders, one of the oldest Eastside furniture stores announced a plan Wednesday to expand its facility into a shopping plaza, including a supermarket, drugstore and an auto parts store.

The 68-year-old Angelus Furniture Warehouse on Olympic Boulevard has entered into a partnership with a local development corporation to raise $9.5 million to renovate the facility, and bring in Food 4 Less, a Sav-On drugstore and Chief Auto Parts, officials said.

“It’s going to be really good for the community,” said Elsa Lopez, project director for Mothers of East Los Angeles, a community organization. “Most people go all the way to Monterey Park and Montebello for shopping because the prices are a lot higher here. If (the new plaza) can keep the money in the community, it would be better. Hopefully other big chains will see that they are welcomed here.”

The East Los Angeles Community Union will help fund the project that will include the first new supermarket in Boyle Heights since the 1992 riots.

Irwin Greenberg, who owns Angelus, agrees that the largely Latino neighborhood has become a critical consumer base for his business.

“The problem with the area is that it hasn’t had the right stores to make the community feel like they want to shop here,” Greenberg said. “But if you offer them something they like they stay with you.”

To accommodate the new businesses, Angelus plans to move its furniture store to the second floor of the structure at 3650 E. Olympic Blvd. and use the ground floor for the new stores. Community union officials said they hope that the Angelus Grand Plaza will open next spring and bring about 300 new jobs to one of the neglected areas of the city, a community where at least 20% of the population lives below the federal poverty line.

The project’s funding sources are two grants, $2.75 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.