Valley and Laurel Plazas: Mega Malls and Mega Dreams

I always found the Macy's location a bit odd since I first noticed it from the 170 Freeway back in 2003 not long after moving to Los Angeles. The image never looked quite right to me, this enormous, lone department store surrounded by what appeared to be a parking lot big enough for the Astrodome.

I didn't know the whole story of why the parking lot was so huge. I didn't know there used to be an entire mall there. Not long after launching the North Hollywood-Toluca Lake Patch site in October I started researching the Macy's to find out why that parking lot was so ridiculously gigantic. It didn't take long, one Google search in fact.

Maybe I became a bit obsessed with the because I come from a place where malls are a very big deal. People in the Twin Cities love their malls. The , the nation's first enclosed and climate-controlled mall, was built there in 1954. The Mall of America, also known as the Megamall, which has the largest amount of retail space of any mall in America, was built there in 1992.

The J.H. Snyder Company's failed 2009 plan called for a $560 million renovation of the plazas, a "Cadillac" plan by anyone's standard (to use Jack McGrath's analogy). Based on the illustrations and plans they released, what a fine mall it would have been, and what a transformative project for the neighborhood, North Hollywood and the East Valley it would have been.

Following the 1994 earthquake, both of the Sherman Oaks malls were renovated. Developers saw a value in reinvesting in those areas. No developer has yet been fully convinced of the plazas' economic viability, but they have been close.

Here are a few things the CRA, Mayor Villaraigosa, the City Council, Councilman Paul Krekorian and the citizens of North Hollywood can do to help a developer see dollar signs when looking at the plazas:

all across the board in the city and the Valley Plaza area since Mayor Villaraigosa took office in 2005, in a large part because he has increased the LAPD's numbers by around 800 officers. Maintaining the current level of the LAPD force is vital for the future of the Valley Plaza and the city. Nothing will scare away developers faster than violent crime and gangs returning to the area. The Summer Night Lights Program and heavy community involvement were also named by Krekorian, Villaraigosa and LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck as having a huge impact on crime reduction in the Valley Plaza area.

One of the biggest reasons the Valley Plaza never received a single major renovation or overhaul since it was built in 1951 is because multiple parties own it. To this day, there are many different owners of the Valley Plaza. Snyder was only able to buy up 77 percent of it, according to the CRA. But the CRA has had eminent domain powers in the Laurel Canyon area since 2009. Any workable future development of the plazas will need a 100 percent consolidation in ownership so a singular, unique and inventive retail project can finally break ground.

In a 2009 article about the City Council granting eminent domain powers to the CRA at the plazas, the Daily News quoted Councilman Tom LaBonge as saying he hoped the developers (J.H. Snyder Co.) would work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to extend the Red Line subway to the new development. Certainly a Valley Plaza Red Line station would help the area see the growth the NoHo Arts District has seen. And if the project ends up happening, the MTA should have added incentive in extending the Red Line east and drawing more people to the most expensive transit project in the history of Los Angeles.

But the biggest question about the future of the plazas has to do with the CRA and if it survives Gov. Brown's efforts to dismantle it. The CRA has been criticized heavily for a great many things, but perhaps it is major reform and more oversight of the CRA which is needed, not a dismantling. The NoHo Arts District is a wonderful, magical place, and clearly there is still more work to be done, but it is difficult to imagine what the area around Lankershim and Magnolia would look like today without the CRA. Possibly not much different than the Valley Plaza.