Politics & Government
City Council Clears Way for Vons to Restart All Shopping Center Construction
A Vons representative says the project could be finished by December.
Construction on the shopping center in the Vons parking lot in Eagle Rock has been cleared to restart in all areas after a vote by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday.
What stopped construction was an "alley vacation," which 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. Von's "alley vacation" expired in April, which shut down construction that had begun in January at 7311 N. Figueroa St.
Click here to read more about why construction was stopped.
Tuesday's vote re-approved the alley vacation, which means that Vons can restart construction on the alley-affected portions of the project. It recently was given clearance by the city to restart constrution on areas of the project not impacted by the alley vacation, according to Vons Director of Public affairs Carlos Illingworth.
Illingworth wrote the following email to Eagle Rock Patch in regard to the City Council vote:
We have now gone back to the City and DOT to get our permits reinstated.With the assistance of the City Council, we hope to obtain the necessary permits shortly and will restart construction on the alley vacation affected areas shortly thereafter.Once we start work in the areas affected by the alley vacation, it should take us about 5 months to complete the project.In the meantime, we will continue work on areas that are not affected by the alley vacation (we recently got released to do that work, which includes the parking areas and the building on the corner of Figueroa and La Loma) and expect to complete this work by December.
The re-approved alley vacation included a total of 31 new conditions requested by the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, many of which were suggested by local residents at public meetings held about the project. Some of the conditions were incorporated by Vons directly into the building plans, and the rest were attached to the Vons alley vacation application by Councilman Jose Huizar, according to Nate Hayward, a field deputy for Huizar, who updated the ERNC on the project at its Sept. 3 meeting.
Hayward also added at the meeting that Vons is anxious to start construction again.
"They are probably millions of dollars in the hole right now," Hayward said. "They’re just looking at us like, pleading, 'Hey, let us start again.' But what we really need to figure out is, we want to do something that makes sense, that’s safe, and that also isn’t going to take six years."
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