The Home Depot wants to raze a popular movie theater and a dozen businesses in Granada Hills to build a big-box store full of tools and lumber. The neighbors aren’t happy.
The Atlanta-based home improvement chain has filed plans to construct a 108,000-square-foot store and a 28,000-square-foot garden center in the North Hills Shopping Center at 16830 Devonshire Street, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
It would require demolishing a Regency Theaters and 12 businesses, including a bank, a Baja Fresh and a O.Tofu House & Pankko Tonkatsu restaurant.
The 9-acre shopping center includes an existing 95,600-square-foot commercial center, a 40,000-square-foot, 2,400-seat movie theater and a surface parking lot.
An affiliate of Home Depot bought the Regency Theatres building at Devonshire and Balboa Boulevard last October for $37 million.
The company has filed an application with L.A. city planners of its intent to build a Home Depot store and garden center, which would require demolishing numerous businesses in the northeast side of the shopping center, according to city records.
The new Home Depot would include parking for 456 cars and 33 bicycles.
Neighborhood groups are concerned about a single business replacing numerous businesses that serve the north San Fernando Valley, including the popular movie theater.
They also expressed concern about traffic and the lack of public input for the project.
“It appears it’s just a done deal without any input from the community,” Dave Beauvais, former president of the Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council, told the Daily News. He said the shopping center was “a lousy place to put a big hardware store.”
“My concerns would be, is it a good fit in that shopping center?” he said. “You’re replacing a bunch of small retail stores and the theater — where most of the traffic was (going) on evenings and weekends — with a huge 140,000-square-foot store. It’s going to draw traffic from all over the north Valley.”
An owner of a building next to Regency Theaters said he’d already hired a lawyer to sue Home Depot. Home Depot did not return requests for comment.
– Dana Bartholomew
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