Porter Ranch Scales Back Mall Plans
The Los Angeles City Council paved the way Tuesday for builders to halve commercial development planned for the Porter Ranch area in the northwest San Fernando Valley.
In changing the city’s planning designation for the area from “regional” commercial to “community” commercial, city officials recognized what the Porter Ranch Development Co. had already determined--that the market made construction of 6 million square feet of retail shops and office towers impractical.
“Nobody is building regional malls anymore,” said Larry Calemine, a spokesman for the development company. “The market has changed so much since this was first proposed.”
The larger project was approved by the City Council in 1990 for the development firm’s 1,300 acres of land north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Instead of a regional commercial area comparable to Warner Center, the developers are now planning about 3 million square feet of commercial space mostly devoted to retail stores to serve the hundreds of homes they are building in the area.
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The development company sought the changes as part of a larger agreement with the city that will allow it to avoid some transportation improvements that had been required by the city based on the larger development plans, said Daniel O’Donnell, a city planner.
Calemine, who is also executive director of the Local Agency Formation Commission, said scaling back the project means there will be less traffic, so there is no longer a need for the same ambitious transportation improvements previously proposed.
Still, some neighbors of the project complained that the council action waives too many of the requirements set by the city to ease traffic that will be generated by the large commercial project and 3,300 homes planned for the area by the development company headed by Nathan Shapell.
Among the transportation improvements no longer required is an extension of Corbin Avenue to connect with De Soto Avenue.
“They are not being farsighted,” said Walter Prince, with the group Porter Ranch is Developed Enough. “They are bowing to the developers.”
Prince said the Porter Ranch development and other projects in the works to the north could overwhelm local streets with traffic.
In addition to adopting an amendment to the General Plan on Tuesday, the council directed the city attorney to draft a new agreement between the city and the developer that limits the development and includes the requirements for transportation improvements.
Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area, also won a change that requires 400 of the residential units to be reserved for 30 years as affordable housing for senior citizens, including a provision that some may be assisted-care housing.
There is a dearth of such housing in the northwest Valley, Bernson said.
“We felt it was important to have that there,” Bernson said. “It provides low-cost housing for an area where it is particularly needed, which is for senior citizens and the aging population.”
Porter Ranch Development Co. has already built about 80 homes as well as 600,000 square feet of retail space in its Town Center project, which includes a Wal-Mart and a Toys R Us.
