Not your ordinary groundbreaking in Los Angeles
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa just finished breaking ground on a $78-million project that economists hope will provide a much-needed retail hub for one of the San Fernando Valley's most impoverished communities, Pacoima.
Use of the 25-acre lot, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Highway 118, had been complicated for years by toxins left by a former Price Pfister plant. But all that is said to now be cleaned up, and soon it will provide a home for a Costco store -- the first to be built in Los Angeles in a dozen years.
Plaza Pacoima will include a Best Buy and other retail and office uses and is expected to create about 400 construction jobs and 350 permanent positions in the Valley at a time when many developers have put projects on hold.
Area boosters called the construction a "coup" and said it brings hope to an hardscrabble industrial center where residents have had to travel far afield to shop. "This is truly going to bring a new identity and a new sense of community to the Pacoima area," said Bruce Ackerman, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley.
A detailed story will soon be posted.
-- Jennifer Oldham
