Primestor Starts $78M Retail Project

PACOIMA, CA-Beverly Hills-based Primestor Development is scheduled to break ground today on its 209,000-square-foot Plaza Pacoima, a $78 million project in this San Fernando Valley city that will include a 160,000-square-foot Costco. The new center, which will occupy a 17.5-acre site at Paxton and Sutter avenues, is slated to open in early 2010.

Arturo Sneider, a Primestor partner, notes that the project is being developed on a former brownfield site where the company is seeking a LEED Silver certification for the completed center. Primestor is building the center as a public/private partnership with Prudential, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and the city’s Community Development Department, with New Market Tax Credit allocations from Genesis LA for revitalizing the neighborhood by creating new jobs.

In addition to the Costco, Plaza Pacoima also will include Best Buy, a nearby Lowe’s and 4,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and office space. The project is being built on the site of the former Price Pfister plumbing fixtures manufacturing plant.

The developers point out that the project will help to revitalize a Pacoima community that developed in the 1950s as a bedroom community for manufacturing centers in Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale. Pacoima’s economy floundered when industries shut down, and it is now one of the lowest income areas in Los Angeles.

The CRA targeted the Pacoima tract for clean-up and redevelopment in 2002. The Plaza Pacoima project will “transform a polluted eyesore into a much-needed retail center,” commented Bruce Ackerman, a CRA board member and the president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley.