The Battle of the Big Box : City Smart / How to thrive in the urban environment of Southern California

The national Battle of the Big Box has landed in Atwater Village. And, depending on which side you believe, that sleepy Los Angeles neighborhood tucked between Griffith Park and Glendale is poised for revival or destruction.

Developers plan to build a 308,000-square-foot shopping center on the vacant Los Feliz Boulevard tract where the Franciscan Ceramics factory, which closed in 1984, produced Desert Rose china for 80 years. The anchor would be a Price Club, the bulk retailer beloved by bargain hunters and sales-tax-hungry cities but feared by some smaller merchants and residents.

Squabbles over such big-box superstores--especially about resulting traffic jams and economic impact on older Main Streets--are increasing around the state and nation. The settings usually are suburban or rural, not the tight urban grid of an area such as Atwater Village, with its 1920s bungalows and multiethnic string of pharmacies, bodegas, bakeries, thrift shops and antique stores.

“This is the kind of big-box development that has backfired in community after community around the country,” said Robert Stanley, an adjacent condominium owner who is a protest leader against the so-called Franciscan Promenade project. Besides attracting gridlock, auto emissions and noise, the Price Club will wipe out the homey business districts on Los Feliz and nearby Glendale boulevards, he predicts.

But city officials, developers and the local Chamber of Commerce insist that the Price Club, along with a Toys R Us, a Ralphs supermarket and other shops also proposed for the center, will attract many new patrons to Atwater Village’s older stores and eateries as well.

“That area right now is one people zoom through. We would like them to stop and shop there,” said Lisa Sarno, an aide to Los Angeles Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who represents Atwater and favors the project after winning some design and traffic improvements.

Supporters also maintain that many residents of northeast Los Angeles shop at the Price Club and Toys R Us in Burbank and gladly would buy their Power Ranger dolls and 18-roll packs of toilet paper in Los Angeles. Not to mention applying for one of several hundred new jobs.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which owns the 45-acre site, is splitting up one of the largest open land parcels in the city. The Lasung World Evangelical Church, a Korean congregation, wants to buy the rear 20 acres for a new church complex. That portion was badly contaminated by lead and other toxics from ceramic sludge. A multimillion-dollar cleanup contributed to the bankruptcy of a previously proposed shopping center.

The front 25 acres is slated for the shopping center. Larry Worshell, president of Asset Acquisitions, one of the developers, declined to reveal project costs or leasing details.

City transportation planners estimate the new stores would attract more than 5,000 additional car round trips a day to an area already clogged by visitors to the Griffith Park zoo and the Greek Theatre. Officials contend that regional air pollution could ease as Angelenos drive shorter distances to shop--an argument that infuriates some locals.

While most village residents agree something needs to be done with the dusty vacant plot, there is deep division about whether a bulk sales big box is appropriate.

“They might hurt our sales. I’d be a fool to say they won’t,” said Robert Woodcock, owner of Woody’s Bicycle World, a 21-year-old business on Los Feliz Boulevard, three blocks from where both the Price Club and Toys R Us are expected to sell bikes. Still, he tentatively favors the plan as long as traffic doesn’t discourage shoppers and crucial on-street parking is kept. Woodcock hopes for added repair and service trade.

Roy Kaushik, manager of the nearby Los Feliz Drugs, thinks he will retain old customers with personal service and home deliveries. But he fears discount pharmacies in the Price Club and Ralphs. “I know they will take business away from me. We are worried about it, but at this point we don’t have much control,” he said.

On May 18, Los Angeles zoning administrator Daniel Green approved the project plans and conditional use permits for liquor sales. On Tuesday, after an emotional three-hour hearing attended by more than 100 people, the Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously upheld Green’s decision and denied opponents’ requests for a full environmental impact report.

Wearing pins proclaiming “Save Atwater Village,” protesters pledged to take their case to the full City Council. The next step would be a lawsuit, similar to the one filed in May by critics of a Price Club planned for Westlake Village in the Conejo Valley. Tactics against big boxes are specified in a 120-page book, “How Superstore Sprawl Can Harm Communities,” published last year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Older cities around the country should brace themselves for Atwater-like battles, warns J. Thomas Black, an urban economist with the Urban Land Institute think tank in Washington.

After tapping suburban growth, big-box retailers are discovering “they can go into established communities with an existing market,” he explained.

In dramatic evidence, PriceCostco Inc. is negotiating for a store in the vacant Robinsons department store building on 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, about as central-city as a location can be.