Retail Center Slips Past Ban, Irks Residents in West Hills

A Los Angeles councilwoman and a group of West Hills residents are fuming over a developer’s use of a loophole in the city’s moratorium on mini-malls to build a 2-story, 10,180-square-foot retail and office building.

A mini-mall is defined under the moratorium as commercial buildings less than 10 feet from side or rear property lines. The building under construction on Valley Circle Boulevard at Vanowen Street will be exactly 10 feet from one of the side lines.

“The thing looks like a mini-mall, it acts like a mini-mall, and it has the same function as a mini-mall,” Councilwoman Joy Picus said. “It just infuriates me.”

But there’s nothing she can do about it.

The corner lot already is zoned for commercial development, and the city issued a building permit for the project in July.

The moratorium was enacted last year to control mini-mall development while the city developed permanent restrictions. The city Planning Department has proposed eliminating the loophole in the final mini-mall ordinance expected to reach the City Council in the next 2 months.

“The staff saw that it was, in a sense, a loophole,” said Eric Ritter, an associate city planner.

Future Projects Affected

The proposed final ordinance also increases parking requirements, requires landscaping around mini-malls and in their parking areas, and bans cluttered pole signs and billboards on the premises. The ordinance would apply only to future projects and not to the West Hills project.

“It’s a blight,” said Heidi Orton, who lives down the street from the project. “The surrounding community is outraged. . . . So many of these mini-malls are turquoise or bright peach pink.”

“You would have cars in and out of there, and the trash is horrendous around any mini-mall,” said George Little, director of the Valley Circle Townhomes Homeowners Assn.

Rita Seashore, president of the West Hills Property Owners Assn., said: “It would be to the developer’s benefit to show some concern for the community, to try and deal with the neighbors, to modify it so it’s more acceptable.”

The developer, identified as H. Fassonaki in city records, did not return telephone calls. A woman who identified herself as his wife said: “We have a permit to build. . . . I don’t see anything insensitive in this.”

The only available description of the project is in Fassonaki’s application for a building permit. The application includes a sketch showing an L-shaped building that faces Valley Circle Boulevard. The sketch shows room for 34 parking spaces in the front and back and no landscaping.

Because the project is on a corner, its occupants will need city approval to sell alcohol or stay open between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and a billboard cannot be erected there, said Jim Dawson, an aide to Picus.

Had Fassonaki’s project fallen under the city’s mini-mall moratorium, he would have needed a conditional use permit to build it in the first place. The permit process would have included public hearings.

Without a public hearing, Orton and some of her neighbors are considering another method of getting their point across.

“There are a lot of people who are going to boycott the stores that are in there,” she said.