The plan has worried the neighborhood where some residents fear heavy truck traffic and streets flooded with cars.
A controversial plan seeking to replace the Regency Theaters and a dozen adjacent businesses with a 130,000-square-foot Home Depot store and garden center in Granada Hills is under review with the Los Angeles City Planning Department, according to a representative with the Atlanta-based home improvement chain.
The plan envisions a sprawling project at 16830 Devonshire Street near Balboa Boulevard.
The city planning agency “is reviewing our application from a planning and design perspective and for CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). Our timeline is still a few years out to begin construction,” wrote Evelyn Fornes, a Home Depot spokeswoman, in an email.
The plan has drawn criticism from several residents who live near the shopping plaza and who express concerns about the project bringing heavy traffic and worsening air quality.
The Regency Theater in Granada Hills on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. Home Depot has plans to build a 130,000-square-foot store and garden center near the intersection of Balboa Boulevard and Devonshire Street.
Maria Fisk, a Granada Hills resident and former Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council member, said she was concerned about trucks entering the largely residential neighborhood.
“The neighbors are going to be experiencing truck deliveries even in the middle of the night,” she said.
Susan Mueller, another Granada Hills resident, was worried that the new store would draw deliveries by semi-trucks to the shopping plaza which is near three schools.
“The kids are crossing the street all the time,” she said. “I think it’s a horrible idea.”
Fisk echoed her concerns, noting that “no matter where the trucks are coming from, they are going to encounter school kids. The community is very concerned about that.”
Home Depot hopes to demolish the theater and 12 businesses including O.Tofu House & Pankko Tonkatsu restaurants, and replace them with a store and garden center. Recently the company launched a page with an online form, inviting project supporters to add their names to a list.
The company purchased the site in the fall of 2021 for $37 million.
Fornes, the spokeswoman with Home Depot, said that under CEQA, “we study all environmental concerns, including traffic and air quality. At the city’s direction, we provide mitigation measures as needed to ensure that any project is built per the CEQA guidelines.”
The company said on its website that Granada Hills needs a Home Depot store “due to the growth we are seeing in the area and to help address customer needs.”
Roger Quintanilla, a spokesman for Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee, wrote in an email that no hearings before the Los Angeles City Council about the Home Depot plan have been scheduled.
“The case is still pending with the city’s planning department. No decision has been made,” Quintanilla wrote.
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