by Timothy Rutt
Just gone live today, Altadena Heritage's website has two articles on Walmart's Altadena plans.
In a "white paper" that's part of the package, it says: "Altadena Heritage board members are observing closely and wondering where, as Altadena’s oldest cultural and architectural preservation organization, we should stand in the Walmart controversy?"
The first article is a site report where Heritage members met with Walmart representatives at the Lincoln Avenue/Figueroa Drive site. Walmart's Randy Terrell and Javier Angulo were on the visit, along with Gene Detchemendhy, who represents Armand Gabay, owner of both the LIncoln/Figueroa site and the open lot on Lake Avenue/Calavaras Street that Walmart is also looking at. Altadena Heritage Board members France Meindl, Michele Zack, David Mosher, Vivien Fortunaso and and Mark Goldschmidt toured the site, along with town councilmen Tecumseh Shackelford and Brent Musson.
Walmart reps confirmed that there will be "site-to-store" at the Lincoln Avenue site, where items can be ordered from the Walmart.com website and picked up at the Altadena location. Walmart's Angulo said the he thought traffic would only involve one or two trucks a day. The Heritage report says that the immediate neighborhood looks "pretty bad," and "Changes to the blighted corner will be a definite boon to the Lincoln corridor."
The site visit occurred before it became known that Walmart was also contemplating the Lake Avenue/Calavaras Street site.
You can read Altadena Heritage's full report here.
The second piece is a "white paper" by Michele Zack, who described it to us in an email as "a long and rambling piece by me that includes broader discussion." While it repeats much of the information in the site report, it also serves as a springboard to an informal email survey that Altadena Heritage wants to use to gauge public sentiment on the development.
Altadena Heritage is pointedly not taking a position on Walmart currently; Zack writes "at this point feel we can best serve the community by bringing more relevant information to light and advocating for high quality development. The two Walmart sites are very different: one is a blighted corner of a former redevelopment district, and the other, while an eyesore, is at the heart of historic Altadena across from the iconic Marston and Mayberry Eliot Middle School and the beautiful brick Mount Lowe Generating plant. Altadena Junction, at Calaveras and Lake, was where it all began here and has strong potential to be developed into something all Altadena can embrace. Maybe now that the big money boys are finally awakening to our charms, we can pull together and decide as a community what we want and find ways we might realistically be able to get it."
ADDENDUM: Don't forget that Town Councilmen Brent Musson and Tecumseh Shackelford will be hosting a meeting at 6 PM tonight at Jackson Elementary School. 593 W. Woodbury Rd. where representatives from Walmart will be available to answer questions.
