Shopping Center

Before the everyone buys their party hats and celebrates too much about the new shopping center at the site of the former GM plant in Van Nuys, (“Life of the Neighborhood,” Oct. 4), it may be useful to look at what we are getting.

To really know if this is cause for celebration, it would be interesting to know what proportion of the jobs at the stores in the new center will pay sufficient wages and benefits for employees to support a family and pursue a particular line of work as a career. Or will the majority of the new jobs employ part-time people in dead-end jobs that will mainly provide more retail outlets for large quantities of cheap Chinese goods?

BOB McKAY

Van Nuys