David Udoff fondly remembers his mother driving him and his brother to Valley Plaza in her avocado Dodge Dart.
Families shopped in what was once a vibrant, bustling retail store. They visited Sears, a bakery, and an animatronic fortune-telling machine in front of a drug store. We then had lunch at Schaber’s Cafeteria with Salisbury steak and Jelly-O platters.
“The good old Valley days,” the 67-year-old ex-boyfriend, who lived in North Hollywood and Toluca Lake, said of family outings in the 1960s.
Now, part of the historic San Fernando Valley Mall is being demolished after years of complaints from nearby residents that the collection of vacant buildings and parking lots is falling into disrepair.
Opened in 1951, Valley Plaza was one of the first and largest outdoor shopping malls on the West Coast and a major commercial center.
In its heyday, crowds flocked to the sprawling complex of suburban buildings and modernist skyscrapers, even visited by John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign.
The demolition, which began this week, comes after the Los Angeles City Commission, appointed by Mayor Karen Bass, voted in August to declare much of the site a public nuisance.
The vote gave the go-ahead for the destruction of six buildings on the square. Some buildings deemed historic will be preserved, including the iconic 12-story, 165-foot tower.
“It’s crazy that this is happening. It’s been an eyesore in the Valley for a long time,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association. “We’re excited to be able to build something usable there.”
Squatters had gathered at the site, and nearby homeowners expressed concerns about the possibility of crime and fire.
Waldman, who lives nearby, said it was “sad” to see the mall deteriorate.
He said he expects the property to be converted into mixed-use commercial and residential space, as was done in the Noho West development, which repurposed the former Laurel Plaza mall and Macy’s department store.
But Waldman warned it could be an uphill battle.
“It’s hard to build in Los Angeles. It’s expensive and the city makes it difficult,” Waldman said. “I hope someone takes a chance. This is an opportunity to help the community while making a profit.”
The Los Angeles Conservancy says the area’s influential shopping center was an early example of reorienting building entrances to face a large parking lot at the rear rather than the street or sidewalk, emphasizing vehicular access from newly constructed freeways.
“This was our stepping stone,” Jack McGrath, former president of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce, said in the Valley Plaza video series.
In the video, McGrath described how thousands of people packed into the mall’s vast parking lot to watch Kennedy’s speech.
“This guy was really handsome, and more importantly, he was the best tanned man I’ve ever seen on a man or a politician,” McGrath said. “The women looked at this guy and looked goofy.”
The shopping center’s decline began with the rise of big box stores and competition from other new shopping malls in Burbank and Sherman Oaks. Economic conflicts in the 1990s and damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake also took their toll, forcing some businesses to permanently close.
In 2000, about 30 percent of the mall’s stores were occupied, and in recent years, film and television producers used the mall as a dingy, wood-paneled backdrop rather than the iconic establishment once featured in the music video for Randy Newman’s 1983 anthem “I Love LA.”
Piles of dirt, concrete debris and other debris surrounded the site Thursday, as bulldozers watched over it.
Fred Gaines, an attorney for the real estate and development company Charles Co., which owns the property and has contracted the demolition contractor, said there are no concrete plans to redevelop the site yet. He said future developments depend on how the city deals with homeless camps in the area.
“We’re going to look to the city to resolve this issue in our neighborhood and make this a viable development site,” Gaines said.
Charles has had its own problems in recent years, with one of the company’s owners embroiled in a major corruption scandal in LA. Co-owner Armand Gabaet was sentenced to four years in federal prison in 2022 after making payments to county officials in exchange for rent and non-public information.
Udoff, a former Valley resident who now lives in South Florida, said he tried to move back to Los Angeles a few years ago, but housing costs were too high. With rising prices in the Miami suburbs where he lives, he wants to resettle in a more affordable area of California or Oregon.
In August, he wrote a letter to Bass’ office asking the city to help develop the property as a cultural center and subsidized affordable housing.
“How things will change,” Udoff said. “They should make it really great.”
Times staff photographer Eric Thayer contributed to this report.
