Council Allows Shift in Porter Ranch Project

The 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 has 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 center, the developers are now planning about 3 million square feet of commercial space, mostly retail stores serving the hundreds of homes they are building in the area.

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.

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.