LA shopping center facing nuisance classification, demolition

A city of Los Angeles building commission vote could result in the demolition of six buildings that collectively made up part of the Valley Plaza shopping center in LA’s North Hollywood neighborhood.

An Aug. 19 report from LAist Southern California Public Radio says the commission vote held that day resulted in the six vacant buildings being classified as public nuisances. The classification when applied to buildings deemed fire, safety or high-crime hazards can be a predecessor to demolition overseen by a city or county and then billed to the property owner.

The LAist report says Valley Center has fallen far from its status as the largest shopping center on the West Coast in the 1950s. Although some sections have been redeveloped, the remaining portions have “been a problem for decades,” according to residents who attended the commission meeting.

The vacant structures were purchased by a West Hollywood firm called The Charles Co. in 2015, but the buildings have remained empty “and became a hotbed for fires, squatting and criminal activity,” according to city officials cited by LAist.

“ For years, the city has asked the Charles Co. to develop the site or sell it," LA City Councilor Adrin Nazarian tells LAist. "They could at least secure it effectively. Instead, they’ve left it to rot and turn[ed] into a blight on the entire neighborhood.”

A law firm representing The Charles Co. says the property owner has spent more than $1 million to attempt to secure and maintain the buildings but portrays those efforts as helpless in the face of “tiny home” and homeless encampments that have been set up by trespassers there.

“The crime is not being committed by the buildings,” an attorney tells LAist, who also predicts the encampments will linger after the structures are dismantled, if demolition occurs.

Valley Plaza, which was opened in 1951, contained some 1 million square feet of shopping floor space by the mid-1950s, according to a report from that time.

According to the same sources, although the shopping center gained a new owner in 2000 who vowed to spend $300 million to renovate Valley Plaza, instead the shopping center saw a steady outward migration of tenants during that decade.

The Wikipedia page also lists several examples of when Valley Plaza served as a filming location, including for the movie “Magnolia,” the television show “Dragnet,” and the music video for Randy Newman’s “I Love LA.”