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LA City Councilmember wants North Hollywood's Valley Plaza shopping center declared a nuisance
A view of the Valley Plaza complex in the early 1990s, already in disrepair.
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Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times
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Topline:
L.A. city officials are considering declaring North Hollywood’s once-iconic Valley Plaza shopping center a public nuisance and having it demolished. The mostly vacant properties have become a hotspot for fires, squatting and other criminal activity over the past decade.
What happened? Valley Plaza shopping center was one of the first open-air shopping centers in the U.S. when it opened in 1951. Business declined in the 1970s, and the center was severely damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. About a decade ago, a company called Five Points, LLC, also known as The Charles Company, acquired the plaza but did not re-open any businesses, sending it into further disrepair.
The Charles Company did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.
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Council support: L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian said he supports a public nuisance declaration for Valley Plaza. He said the shopping center has become an eyesore and a danger to the surrounding neighborhood. “The property owner has refused to take adequate precautions against fire and illegal occupation,” Nazarian wrote in a letter to the Board of Building and Safety Commission last week. “Repeated citations have not persuaded the owner to secure these properties.”
Previous enforcement: In recent years, Los Angeles police and fire officials have been called to the property hundreds of times to respond to structure fires, drug overdoses, trespassing and vandalism, according to departmental records. The property has been subject to at least seven abatement orders from the city, which Nazarian says haven’t been followed.
What’s next?: The Board of Building and Safety Commissioners will consider the Valley Plaza public nuisance designation at a hearing set for Tuesday, Aug. 19. The designation would give the city of L.A. power to demolish the buildings and hold the owner accountable for the associated costs. Nazarian said he plans “a coordinated operation” at the property on the morning of the hearing with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, LAPD and other agencies “to relocate any unauthorized occupants to safer shelter.”
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