Valley Plaza may look like an ordinary strip mall that kicked the can due to the rise of online retail, but it\u2019s actually a shell of what it once was. We\u2019ll explore its past and wax nostalgic about its heyday with tales from Angelenos.<\/p>\n
The novelty of Valley Plaza<\/p>\n
The plaza first opened in 1951 at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Victory boulevards, and with it, the San Fernando Valley began a new era. Post-war, the suburbs were rapidly growing, and this center was right in the middle of all the action.<\/p>\n
The shopping experience we know today \u2014 where you can go to one large location and find every store you need \u2014 was just starting to take shape. When developer Bob Symonds designed Valley Plaza as an open-air shopping center, it was believed to be one of the first of its kind in the United States, especially one to do so at such a scale.<\/p>\n
His \u201cultra-modern<\/a>\u201d plaza got national attention for a few reasons. For one, Symonds is credited as a pioneer<\/a> in Southern California for recognizing the potential of putting retail hubs next to freeways. Most developers still focused on boulevards. He also put hundreds of parking spots in front of the mall, rather than in the back, which was the normal practice. The \u201cmammoth\u201d shopping area, as it was hailed<\/a>, was ultimately special because it brought together a huge range of stores.<\/p>\n I put out a call on social media for people to send me their memories. <\/p>\n \u201cI remember how excited we were to have real stores near us,\u201d wrote<\/a> Pat DeCurtins, who lived in North Hollywood between the \u201840s and \u201860s. \u201cWe no longer had to order all our clothes from Spiegels Catalogue. We could buy clothes in a REAL store.\u201d<\/p>\n A flooded intersection next to Valley Plaza in 1962.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Gordon Dean<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n Valley Times Collection\/Los Angeles Public Library<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n One of those was Sears, which opened its largest location<\/a> at the time in the U.S. at Valley Plaza (it apparently smelled like popcorn, too). Sears joining was the key to getting other companies onboard. Thrifty<\/a> also opened a store, signing the longest lease in its history at the time for 25 years.<\/p>\n Symonds was known for courting big companies and curating the plaza\u2019s stores to blend the essential, mundane and desirable. It had mom-and-pop shops, innovative self-service grocery stores, a theater, an ice skating rink and restaurants like the Hawaiian spot Kel Luau.<\/p>\n \u201cMy little son and I would go to this tropical style restaurant in Valley Plaza mall across from the ice skating arena,\u201d wrote<\/a> Cassandra Adams. \u201cWe would have blue drinks from a glass shell with two long straws. They would put a sugar cube floating on top and light it on fire. It was really fun!\u201d<\/p>\n Valley Plaza\u2019s downward spiral<\/p>\n Valley Plaza was a roaring success for a while. It brought in $100 million<\/a> in annual sales in its first five years and was a big employment boost for the community. The plaza would later expand to cover more than 1 million square feet, ranking it as one of the largest in the nation.<\/p>\n A group of store managers pose in front of new Valley Plaza signage with developer Bob Symonds and honorary Valley Plaza mayor Anita Gordon in April 1957.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Valley Times Collection\/Los Angeles Public Library<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n It even had the tallest building in the San Fernando Valley with the Los Angeles Federal Savings and Loan Tower, now known as Valley Plaza Tower<\/a>. Built in 1960, the 165-foot-tall building was one of the first skyscrapers constructed after the repeal of the city of L.A.\u2019s building height limit a few years prior.<\/p>\n In the decades after, Valley Plaza slowly declined. The area\u2019s demographics shifted, meaning shopping habits changed, and vacant spots in the center weren\u2019t replaced with similar quality stores. The plaza\u2019s future was also hard to plan because it had dozens of owners at one point, ranging from corporations to a 90-year-old widow, according to UCLA research<\/a>.<\/p>\n But one event may have sealed its fate: the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. According to an L.A. City Council motion<\/a>, many of the buildings were red-tagged, and tenants who didn\u2019t have the capital for repairs got evicted.<\/p>\n Since then, Valley Plaza has been a thorn in L.A.\u2019s side. While some of it has been redeveloped, numerous plans for the center have failed. Owners haven\u2019t fixed the broken-down lots. L.A. leaders even explored the possibility of using eminent domain<\/a> to take it over.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not known yet what will happen to Valley Plaza once demolition is completed, but some say it will be sorely missed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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