3 Anchors Added for GM Center
Three national retailers have joined Mann Theatres as anchors in what would be the northeast Valley’s largest shopping and industrial complex being planned on the site of the former General Motors assembly plant, sources close to the project confirmed Tuesday.
Office Max, Home Depot and Babies R Us represent three of the six major tenants that have reportedly signed agreements to open stores in the center, which would be the northeast Valley’s biggest retail development since Panorama Mall was built in the 1950s.
Plans for the center, estimated to cost between $75 million and $100 million, call for a 3,700-seat, 16-screen Mann theater complex, restaurants and retail shops on 36 acres of the nearly 100 acre site. An additional 30 acres would be devoted to industrial development.
In 1996, S & V Van Nuys Properties, a cooperative venture of developers Selleck Properties and Voit Cos., agreed to develop the GM property. In December, Mann was the first company to announce that it had signed on to the project.
“We are very encouraged and extremely excited about recent events,” said Dan Selleck of Selleck Properties. He confirmed that his company was negotiating with several retailers, including restaurants, clothing stores and a party supply store.
A spokesman for Voit, which is handling the industrial side of the development, said the company has also been in talks with a number of potential manufacturing tenants.
“There has been a lot of interest in the site. The Voit Cos. are currently in negotiations with several possible tenants,” said the spokesman, who declined to name the companies or say what industries they represent.
More than 2,500 workers were laid off when General Motors shut the assembly plant in August 1992, after operating there for 45 years. City officials have been working ever since to develop a project that would help to replace those lost jobs.
Supporters say the proposed retail-industrial center would create up to 2,000 jobs and provide area residents with much-needed retail and entertainment venues.
Government and community leaders have also voiced hopes that the project, situated on Van Nuys Boulevard, will help to revive a neighborhood which has suffered in recent years from gangs, drugs and high levels of violent crime.
Others, however, have said that most of the new jobs will be low-paying retail positions. Without a healthy balance between retail and industrial tenants, they warn, the center will not provide the economic boon that city and neighborhood officials are counting on.
“It’s a great opportunity to rejuvenate the area. But you need more than just retail shops to do that,” said Mike Zugsmith, chairman of Capital Commercial New America Network, an Encino-based commercial real estate brokerage.
“To realize the site’s full potential, it is important that some industrial or manufacturing tenants move in who will pay a good wage,” Zugsmith said.
Meanwhile, an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who has called for a sixth Valley police station on the site as part of the development, said Tuesday that the project will include a “police presence.”
“There will be some sort of police presence there. Whether it is a substation or a full-fledged police station we don’t know yet,” said Alarcon aide Annette Castro.
A public hearing on the development plan is scheduled for April 2 before the city zoning administration.
