Meeting to Focus on New Home Depot Site

In an effort to notify neighbors of a plan to relocate its Van Nuys store and create a site where day laborers can gather, Home Depot will host a public meeting Thursday at a Van Nuys hotel.

The meeting is designed to provide a forum for people to discuss the home improvement chain’s proposal to move its Van Nuys store from its current location at Balboa and Roscoe boulevards to a 19-acre site a few blocks east at Woodley Avenue and Roscoe.

“The store is 8 years old,” explained Tom McCarty, a government relations consultant working with Home Depot on the proposal. “It was designed to operate at about half the current volume.”

According to a traffic analysis released in April, the company has proposed building a 236,726-square-foot shopping center at the new site, including a fast-food restaurant and gas station. “It gives us a chance to build a store that will better serve the community,” McCarty said.

If the plan is approved, Home Depot hopes to open the center in the spring of 1998, McCarty added.

“I think that is absolutely the worst location they could choose in the San Fernando Valley,” said Dex Morris, a North Hills resident who fears a crippling increase in traffic at the new site.

Home Depot has also drawn the ire of neighbors by suggesting that a portion of the new parking lot could be set aside as a city-sanctioned site where day laborers would congregate to solicit work. McCarty said it is one of eight sites the chain is considering to address what he called the day laborer “phenomenon” associated with many home improvement stores.

“We are also asking the community to see if they have any suggestions,” McCarty said. “We are trying to work with the community to develop the appropriate response.”

The meeting will start at 7 p.m. in the Balboa Ballroom of the Airtel Plaza Hotel, 7277 Valjean Ave. A public hearing on Home Depot’s application for a conditional-use permit to build the shopping center will be held at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 30 at the Sherman Oaks Woman’s Club, 4808 Kester Ave.