Why Vons Stopped its Shopping Center Construction

Almost exactly 11 weeks ago, scores of residents from Eagle Rock and neighboring communities attended a riveting PowerPoint presentation about plans to build a shopping center on the outskirts of the Vons supermarket on Figueroa Street.

Since then, as anyone who shops at the Vons store or drives by there regularly might have noticed, not a shovel has been turned on the proposed shopping center site. Heavy machinery sits idle on dug-up earth and the only piece of “construction” is a disjointed wooden frame a couple of “stories” high, eerily jutting out of the ground.

In fact, construction on the Vons property had come to a halt days before community members crowded into the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, to attend the so-called “Proposed Shops at Vons Development Community Meeting” jointly sponsored on April 30 by the Council District 14 office of Councilmember José Huizar, TERA and the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council.

And yet, neither David Zylstra, chief operating officer of Property Development Centers, a subsidiary of Von’s parent company Safeway, nor any other speaker that evening uttered a word about the stoppage of construction, which began Jan. 28 after being put on hold in 2011.

So it’s worth asking: Why did construction stop, why hasn’t it resumed yet, and how on earth did Zylstra expect to finish the project as early as October, as he had optimistically announced?

According to CD 14 Field Deputy Kevin Ocubillo, Vons’ developers stopped construction because of the expiration of a so-called “alleyway vacation” that the grocery chain had been granted by the city to develop the alley area linking La Loma Road to the supermarket.

An alleyway vacation is the time given to a developer to develop an alley or a portion of it prior to purchasing the developed area from the city and integrating it into the development’s larger plan.

Typically, an alleyway vacation lasts two years—and that “holiday” had ended for Vons by the time it participated in the April 30 community meeting at the Center for the Arts.

Vons is now waiting for the Bureau of Engineering to write a report on the alleyway vacation, as per city procedure, and makes related recommendations to the City Council, which must approve the vacation before construction can resume, Ocubillo said. 

“We told them that the alleyway vacation may be done in October, partly because of the Council recess [July 8-19] and because half the Council is new,” Ocubillo said, adding: “I’m not sure they can get it done sooner than that.”

Vons has not yet fulfilled certain conditions, including the posting of bonds (sureties) for improvements to the construction area, Ocubillo said, explaining that those conditions likely will add to the delay in Vons getting another alleyway vacation.

Which, it turns out, might be a blessing in disguise after all: Another reason why Vons stopped construction is that the company wants to incorporate many of the string of suggestions proposed by community members during the April 30 meeting, Ocubillo explained, adding that any delay in getting the alleyway vacation will give Vons some more time to include the community’s suggestions into their construction plans. 

“I’ve made myself available as a resource to Vons,” Ocubillo said. “We want to see this done as soon as possible.”