David Udoff fondly remembers how his mother would drive him and his brother to Valley Plaza in her avocado Dodge Dart.
The family would shop at the once-vibrant and bustling selection of retail businesses. They would visit the Sears, a bakery and the animatronic fortune-telling machine in front of the drug store. Then, they would lunch on Salisbury steak and Jell-O platters at Schaber’s Cafeteria.
“The good old Valley days,” the 67-year-old former North Hollywood and Toluca Lake resident said of his family outings in the 1960s.
Now, swathes of the historic San Fernando Valley mall are being demolished, after years of complaints from neighbors that the collection of vacant buildings and parking lots had fallen into disrepair.
The Valley Plaza, which opened in 1951, was among the first and largest open-air shopping malls on the West Coast, and a major center of commerce.
In its heyday, the sprawling complex of suburban buildings and modernist high rises drew crowds and even a visit from John F. Kennedy during his 1960 presidential campaign.
The demolition, which began this week, came after a panel of Los Angeles city commissioners appointed by Mayor Karen Bass voted in August to declare much of the site a public nuisance.
The vote greenlit the destruction of six buildings in the plaza. Some structures deemed historic, including its iconic 12-story, 165-foot-tall tower — among the first skyscrapers built in L.A. — will be spared.
“It’s crazy that it’s happening. It has been an eyesore in the Valley for so long,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “We’re excited we are going to have something built there that will be usable.”
The site had drawn squatters, and nearby homeowners voiced concerns about crime and potential fires.
Waldman, who lives nearby, said watching the mall’s deterioration “has been sad.”
He said he expects the property will be turned into a mixed-use commercial and residential space, as was done in the development of NoHo West, which repurposed the site of the former Laurel Plaza mall and a Macy’s department store.
But Waldman warned it could be an uphill battle.
“It’s hard to build in L.A. It is expensive, and the city makes it difficult,” Waldman said. “I hope someone’s going to take a chance. It’s an opportunity to help the community while also making a profit.”
The influential regional shopping center was an early example of how building entrances were reoriented to face large rear parking lots instead of streets and sidewalks, emphasizing vehicle access from newly built freeways, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
“This was our stomping ground,” Jack McGrath, a former president of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce, said in a video series on Valley Plaza published by the news outlet Patch in 2013.
McGrath, in the video, described how thousands of people crowded into the mall’s sprawling parking lot to see Kennedy speak.
“This man was absolutely handsome, and more importantly, he had the best-looking tan I’ve ever seen on a man or a politician,” McGrath said. “The women were goofy, looking at this fellow.”
The shopping center’s decline began with the rise of big-box retail, as well as competition from other newer malls in Burbank and Sherman Oaks. Economic strife in the 1990s and damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake also dealt blows, pushing some businesses to permanently close.
In 2000, about 30% of the mall’s storefronts were vacant, and in recent years film and television producers have used the site as a grimy, boarded-up backdrop — rather than an iconic institution once showcased in the music video for Randy Newman’s 1983 anthem, “I Love L.A.”
On Thursday, piles of dirt, concrete shards and other debris surrounded the property, with a bulldozer watching over.
Fred Gaines, an attorney for Charles Co., the real estate and development firm that owns the property, and which engaged the demolition contractor, said there was not yet a specific redevelopment plan for the site. He said future development would depend on how the city handles homelessness encampments in the area.
“We certainly will look to the city to fix this problem in the neighborhood and allow this to be a viable development site,” Gaines said.
Charles Co. has had its own problems in recent years, as one of the firm’s owners became embroiled in a major L.A. corruption case. Co-owner Arman Gabaee was sentenced in 2022 to four years in federal prison after making payments to a county official in return for leases and nonpublic information.
Udoff, the former Valley resident who currently lives in South Florida, said he tried to move back to L.A. a few years ago, but housing was too expensive. As prices rise in the Miami-area suburb where he lives, he is looking to resettle in a more affordable area in California or Oregon.
In August, he wrote a letter to Bass’ office urging the city to help steer development of the property into a cultural center or subsidized affordable housing.
“How things change,” Udoff said. “They should make it into something really nice.”
Times staff photographer Eric Thayer contributed to this report.
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