A Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch? Why, It’s an Outrage!
Love, it is said, makes the world go round. But something less than love has its place, too. Does not the yin of happy contentment need the yang of sullen anger?
Consider the feelings in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains, north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway, where some folks are mad as hell, et cetera. Time was when we worried about the Commies. Now in the gated communities of Porter Ranch, people are fretting and fuming about the capitalists.
To put it more precisely:
Wal-Mart is coming! Wal-Mart is coming!
Well, there goes the neighborhood.
And there goes Porter Ranch, into the arms of the Valleyistas.
Don’t think, Porter Ranch, that I’m completely unsympathetic. Nobody who plunks down $400,000 or $500,000 to live in a purportedly master-planned community dreams of a discount store moving in down the street. Everybody would wonder about the impact on property values and the proverbial “quality of life.” If it’s Wal-Mart shoppers they worry about, well, thank goodness for those security gates.
That’s not to suggest I wouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart, but I like to think I’m too cheap to be a snob. Besides, it’s not as though a 99 Only store is coming, with the Lyle Menendez book as a Father’s Day special. (By the way, that 99-cent six-pack of Cokes I picked up there the other day wasn’t flat at all.)
But certainly the people of Porter Ranch thought they were staking a claim to the good life, not the bargain basement, when they bought into the Shapell Industries’ ever-sprawling development. They were buying nice, big homes and they were buying walls and fences and security entrances with little guard shacks to keep out the unwanted.
And when Shapell promised the creation of the Porter Ranch Towne Center, they envisioned a Pavilions for groceries, a Nordstrom for clothes, a Starbucks for a little designer caffeine--”a Century City sort of thing, upper class,” one resident was quoted as saying.
But the other day, Porter Ranchers learned from city planners that these big box stores were coming instead: Best Buy, Toys R Us, Petsmart and the unspeakable W-store.
Capitalism can get ugly sometimes. Private property rights can be a pain when it’s somebody else’s private property. If Nordstrom and even Macy’s aren’t interested and Wal-Mart and Petsmart are, well, that’s the free market for you.
Still, Porter Ranchers must feel like victims of a bait-and-switch. They must feel like Shapell made promises it couldn’t keep.
But instead, they are blaming the messenger. They are directing their unfocused rage at City Hall. Reaching for secession petitions, members of a residents committee appointed to review Porter Ranch planning have said that Councilman Hal Bernson’s office and the City Hall bureaucracy have kept them in the dark.
Ignorance, certainly, is not bliss. But, obviously, neither is knowing the truth, not when the truth is a Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch. Bernson says it is an “absolute lie” that his office conspired in some sort of Wal-Mart cover-up. Bernson’s not the sort of politician to do this, but I like to imagine the councilman in a Marine uniform confronting his constituents. “The truth?” he would say. “You want the truth? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
The truth, alas, is that Shapell has a legal right to develop this commercially zoned property to the prescribed density. The truth is that the market forces did not attract the sort of “upper class” retailers residents had anticipated. The truth is that if residents really want to crusade against Wal-Mart, they should send their complaints to Shapell.
Maybe they should call Tom Zeiger in Shapell’s Beverly Hills headquarters, because that’s who the receptionist at Shapell’s home sales office told me to call--and because Zeiger seems to have trouble returning reporters’ calls, including mine.
And maybe they should complain to Wal-Mart directly, because if Wal-Mart really feels unwanted, Shapell would have to shop for another tenant.
Porter Ranchers who still wish to blame City Hall may recall that, across the Valley, the L.A. City Council recently came to the unhappy conclusion that it couldn’t legally prevent property owners in the ecologically esteemed Big Tujunga Wash from building a golf course. Strong arguments were made that Los Angeles should preserve this rare and ruggedly beautiful landscape for today and future generations. The stakes were greater than this Wal-Mart snit, but the legal principle was similar. It the council tried to stop development, the city attorney warned, owners could sue the taxpayers for inverse condemnation--and win millions.
“I’m not happy about it myself,” Bernson says of the prospective Wal-Mart. He says he heard four months ago Wal-Mart might come and has lobbied Shapell to find another tenant.
The best may be simple persuasion. If Shapell really wants to build and sell more of its pricey homes, what will upwardly mobile buyers think when they drive up Rinaldi Street past the Wal-Mart? The problem, Bernson suggests, is that Shapell got tired of sitting on that vacant land. Now that the economy is humming again, he says, the developer might find a tenant that would please residents and boost home sales.
It’s funny, meanwhile, that some Porter Ranchers would look to Century City as a role model. Century City’s mall relies greatly on shoppers from its high-rise office towers. Shapell indeed once dreamed of that sort of thing in Porter Ranch--up to 6 million square feet of office, hotels and shopping.
The developer’s dreams were drastically scaled back. The economics argued against it--and so did many residents. They worried about the density, they worried about the traffic, they worried about their vistas. They worried about the quality of life.
Wal-Mart? That, surely, never crossed their minds.
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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.
