North Hills, CA Experts in Container Rental, Sales & Customization

NORTH HILLS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Protestors gathered in North Hills at the site of one of the oldest houses in the community. The house dates all the way back to 1914. Neighbors say they're concerned about plans by Valor Academy to build a new elementary school on the lot.

"It's not a big enough area, there's already enough congestion in the morning and afternoon on Plummer here. We need more green spaces; we need more parks," said North Hills resident Tina Purwin.

Many community members say there are more than 20 schools in the area and they would rather preserve the house and use the land to build a park instead.

"They want to build this school in the middle of Plummer Street and Sepulveda Middle School is already at the corner. We really feel the best thing to do is to improve the schools and the infrastructure that we already have," said North Hills Preservation Consortium President Debora Masterson. "We don't need to build a new school we need to improve the schools."

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez hasn't taken a position on the plan but submitted a letter to the Cultural Heritage Commission requesting the house be designated as a historical cultural monument. Even if that happens, officials with the charter school say they plan on preserving the house and will build the school campus around it.

"So, we have been working diligently with the local council office, with the Cultural Heritage Commission and we have full intention on preserving the house," said Valor Academy Executive Director Hrag Hamalian. "That has always been part of the plan. And what a beautiful way to take a historical monument, preserve it, and put it right next to the future of our community."

Valor Academy currently has its elementary school in Arleta and the school says moving the location would benefit the students and parents.

"I think for our parents the proximity of the schools is also very important because ultimately the morning time just become crucial times for them dropping off their students," said Valor Academy High School Principal Dr. Evelyn Licea.

The school is still in escrow with the current homeowner, but the Cultural Heritage Commission will have another meeting in the near future to decide if the property will be designated as a historical house.

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A weekly food pantry that many in the northeast San Fernando Valley have come to depend on will keep operating during the novel coronavirus pandemic — with drive-through, pickup service on Thursday and Friday.

Volunteers and staff for North Valley Caring Services at 15453 Rayen St. in North Hills, will be distributing 1,000 pre-packaged grocery bags from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. over the two days.

The organizations aims to carry out the operation at an efficient clip — and with attention to “social distancing” recommendations in place throughout Los Angeles to slow the spread of the new illness.

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According to a flyer posted by the organization, anyone looking to pick up the food would need to be able to do it in a vehicle. Participants would not be allowed to exit the vehicle or park to pick up the food, and the bags will be given out “in a safe and fast-paced environment,” the flyer said.

North Valley Caring Services is among the service organizations in the area that have had to make this and other adjustments. The organization is still offering services and programs in a more limited way, with an eye-toward maintaining safe distances between people, said the organization’s volunteer and communications coordinator Catalina Roldan.

Ongoing programs include case-management, which will now be done over the phone, and as of March 19, 2020, the breakfast and showers will still operate, and other programs are continuing, she added.

But the campus’s community shop and hub for small start-up businesses, Colectivo, has closed, she said.

The organization typically does case-management for homeless individuals and families, holds classes, offers meals distribution to those in need, provides breakfasts and showers and operates a safe-parking program. To get the latest status of the programming, the organization recommended calling them at (818) 891-0481.

Manny Flores, the organization’s executive director, explained their mission as “upholding that every person be treated with dignity and compassion despite their present or past experiences.”

“I believe that we are commissioned to contribute to the spiritual, emotional and physical being of those in need,” he said.

The organization continues to accept monetary donations for its programs, as well as hygiene supplies such as hand sanitizer, diapers and baby supplies, canned and dry food, and boxes and tape to be used to hold food. All items collected will later be distributed to families in need and homeless individuals.

Nearly 10 months after the popular Regency Theaters in Granada Hills was acquired by Home Depot, a new plan envisions turn the theater and a dozen shops and restaurants into an imposing mega hardware store.

The Atlanta-based home improvement chain bought the Regency Theatre building in October for $37 million. Its plan calls for a 136,000 sq. foot main building and 28,000 sq. ft. garden center at the intersection of Balboa Boulevard and Devonshire Street.

The plan quickly drew criticism from surrounding communities concerned about parking, traffic — and the loss of their area’s popular theater and 12 businesses including O.Tofu House & Pankko Tonkatsu restaurant, according to a representative with the Los Angeles Planning Department.

Representatives of Home Deport have filed an application with city planners, disclosing their intent to build a vast store with a garden center at 16830 Devonshire Street that would require demolition of numerous businesses in the northeast part of the shopping center. A total of 456 parking spaces are planned, and 33 bicycle spaces, according to documents filed with the city.

Dave Beauvais, former president of the Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council, said the reason some neighbors and business owners are upset is because the concept moved forward without enough neighborhood input.

“It appears it’s just a done deal without any input from the community,” he said. “That’s the biggest problem.”

He said the shopping center, home to a supermarket, restaurants, a bank, the movie theater and many other businesses, was “a lousy place to put a big hardware store.”

“My concerns would be, is it a good fit in that shopping center?” he said. “You’re replacing a bunch of small retail stores and the theater — where most of the traffic was (going) on evenings and weekends — with a huge 140,000 sq. foot store. It’s going to draw traffic from all over the north Valley,” he said.

The new store would be nearly twice as large as the theater’s footprint. An owner of a building adjacent to Regency Theaters declined to comment, but said he’d already hired a lawyer to sue Home Depot. Representatives of Home Depot didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

Granada Hills resident Linda Williamson said, “There’s a variety of businesses which serve a variety of purposes and I am not delighted about a single business replacing this variety.”

She added that building a massive hardware store would not serve the community’s needs and would be “a significant change to the character of the neighborhood.”

“A community is a diverse group of people with a diverse group of needs,” Williamson said. “That’s why there’s a diverse group of businesses there, to serve them. And for Home Depot corporation — it feels like they’re just coming in and saying: ‘No, no, no, all you need is one giant hardware store.’”

She added that demolishing the popular theater and shops would clearly lead to the loss of “a good family-friendly activity.”

Michael Benedetto, president of the Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council, said the new project would displace businesses that “Granada Hills has come to know and love.” Ralphs and AutoZone, which are located on a separate parcel, would remain, according to the city planning department.

He added that the neighborhood council’s position on the project is neutral, but “this has been a tremendous community concern. We get a lot of emails from a lot of different people.”

He said that although residents had “mixed feelings” about the mega Home Depot, nearly 80% of them opposed it, especially due to the loss of the beloved Regency Theaters, which has been showing films in Granada Hills for more than 25 years.

The neighborhood council will have a town hall in the next few weeks with representatives from Home Depot and the city planning department who will answer questions and share their plans for the new store.

Plans to move a San Fernando Valley charter school closer to the underresourced Latino community that it serves have run into opposition from preservationists, who say the North Hills neighborhood already has enough schools and have raised concerns about a 1910s-era house on the proposed lot.

The single-story house at 15526 Plummer St. was one of the first constructed in Mission Acres, as North Hills was originally named. Built in 1914, the home was owned by John L. Plummer, a pioneering farmer who owned about 90 acres, according to a report by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission.

SurveyLA, a citywide historic resources review, designated the property as “very rare” and a “remaining example of an intact 1910s residence.”

Debora Masterson, 72, who founded the 60-member North Hills Preservation Consortium, said the Plummer house and the adjacent parcel should be used for a museum dedicated to early California history and a community park instead of a school. She has been helping lead the charge for designating the house a historic-cultural monument, raising more than $5,000 to hire a consultant to write the nomination.

Members of the preservation group started a petition and staged a protest in July, arguing that there are already more than a dozen schools in the neighborhood.

The charter school, Valor Academy Elementary, has moved among temporary locations in Granada Hills, Panorama City and Arleta over the last seven years and aims to find a permanent home. Chief Executive Hrag Hamalian of Bright Star Schools, which runs nine charter schools in the Valley, Koreatown and West Adams, said the new location would shorten commutes for Valor Academy parents, many of whom have children at multiple Bright Star campuses.

The three Bright Star Schools in North Hills serve about 1,430 students, of which 93% are Latino and 94% are from low-income families, according to the charter group.

“This isn’t a new school,” Hamalian said. “We have almost 400 kids enrolled, and the only reason we can’t exceed enrollment is because of facility constraints. This property will allow us to grow the school larger.”

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Hamalian said that he supports the historic-cultural designation for the house and that an architect and consultant have been hired to ensure the rest of the school buildings will incorporate the “continued motif and aesthetic of the home.”

“We’ve been honestly quite confounded, confused and hurt [by the opposition because] since the beginning of this project, we have been in full public support of the historical designation and the preservation of the house,” he said.

The school is waiting on city approval of its plans, expected to come in the next three to six months, before beginning construction.

In its preliminary plans, the school listed the house’s future use as administrative, but Hamalian said he remains open to other ideas for the house and collaborating with the North Hills Preservation Consortium.

“It’s hard not to draw a straight-line correlation between us wanting to build a school for 500 Latinx kids that live in this community and this historical designation being utilized to combat our school project,” he said.

Hamid Nourafchan, the owner of the Plummer house since 2010, said that it was a “personal decision” to sell to Bright Star Schools and that it’s “providing a much-needed educational resource to the surrounding community.” Masterson reached out to him several times over the last year, he said, but he informed her that he was already in escrow with the school.

“As I understand, Bright Star is planning to incorporate the existing [single-family rental] Debora wanted saved as the office component of the new school,” said Frank Evanisko, Nourafchan’s real estate broker. “It would seem to me like this should be music to her ears.”

But Masterson said the preservation group finds it “not acceptable” for the house to be used as a school office instead of a museum.

“You walk in the door and it’s as if the Plummer family is still living there,” she said. “They had wells and chicken coops in the backyard and they dry farmed. It gives people a sense of place and a sense of belonging that I think is really important.”

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Oct. 3, 2022

Masterson, who was raised in North Hills and whose late husband grew up about a quarter-mile away, said she came across the Plummer house on the city’s zoning website last year.

“It felt like a calling,” she said. “It felt like a thunderbolt or something hit me, and I was like, ‘I have to do something about this.’ For my late husband, for my family, for all of the people that I’ve known in this area.”

The Plummer family owned the house from 1912-19 before selling it, said Ken Bernstein, manager of the city’s Office of Historic Resources. They resided in their main home a couple of blocks to the west, but it was demolished in the 1980s.

If the building is approved as a historic-cultural monument, it can’t be torn down without the permission of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission.

“The fact that this home remains from 1914, even before this community became part of Los Angeles, it’s a very rare, intact example from that earliest time period,” Bernstein said.

The house’s nomination was approved by the Office of Historic Resources and the Cultural Heritage Commission, leaving the City Council to decide on final approval. Though the typical deadline for the City Council to act is Nov. 16, the time limit is flexible because of the city’s COVID-19 emergency declaration. Masterson said they’ve been told that “chances are very good” that the council will approve it.

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez has backed the historic designation for the house but hasn’t taken a stance on what should be built on the property.

With the preservation group pushing for the lot to include a community park, Rodriguez emphasized the need for open spaces in park-poor neighborhoods such as North Hills.

“I think when you look at areas with a high concentration of multi-family homes, we saw through the pandemic that there’s a great deal of need for these types of facilities,” she said. “It’s good for mental health and respite when you have access to open space.”

Rodriguez’s request for $1.2 million from the state to acquire land for open space in North Hills did not make it into this year’s budget, according to her office.

“We’re in the circumstance where we’re leaning on this historic-cultural monument for preserving history and making sure whoever is there is respecting that and it’s an important part of whatever project ends up being developed there,” Rodriguez said.

Residents on both sides of the issue have spoken out about what the school site would mean to them.

Lesly Agustin, 31, has lived in the area for eight years and drives about 15 minutes between Valor Academy Elementary School and Valor Academy High School to pick up her four children. She said she’s “very happy” about the new school location, because it’ll cut her driving time by nearly half.

Yesenia Ostorga, 33, takes a taxi every day from Van Nuys to drop off her two children at Valor Academy Elementary. The new location will allow her to walk there in three minutes once she makes a planned move to North Hills, she said.

Ervin Arevalo, a member of the North Hills Preservation Consortium and a fourth-grade teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District for 24 years, said using the house as a museum could be enriching for his students.

“It’d be good for students to come over and experience how these homes work,” he said. “There’s remnants of what it was like before. Just having artifacts there from a while back would be a great experience for kids.”

This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

April 21 Event is Open to the Community to Showcase New Granada Hills Social Services Facility

Community Contributor

Lutheran Social Services of Southern California (LSSSC), a leading provider of social services programs in six counties throughout Southern California, will host a ribbon cutting and open house on Friday, April 21 at their new San Fernando Valley program office located in the City of Granada Hills, 16605 Devonshire, Suite #B. The event is open to the public from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. with tours of the facility beginning at 2:00 p.m.

Entitled A World of Services Happens in The San Fernando Valley, the open house will feature appetizers from around the world provided by 818 Plates Catering. Additionally, guests will enjoy tours, networking, and prize drawings. The Chamber of Commerce of Granada Hills will be on hand to provide a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:00 p.m.

The new Granada Hills location will serve as the official California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) site. CalAIM is a long-term commitment to transform and strengthen Medi-Cal by offering Californians a more equitable, coordinated, and person-centered approach to maximizing their health and life trajectory. This initiative will serve low-income and homeless communities in the greater Los Angeles region.

Program staff will also utilize two new mobile wellness vehicles to serve as mobile offices, providing participants with professional and confidential services outside of a “brick and mortar” office setting. Other services include the expansion of programs to low-income immigrant families with language barriers and limited access to services.

“With this new facility and our new mobile offices, we will be ramping up our in-person services even more following the end of the COVID-19 crisis. During that time, we provided a lot of mobile services to the community that will continue from this amazing new location,” says Imelda Bealer, LSSSC’s CalAim Program Manager.

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To RSVP to the open house event or learn more about Lutheran Social Services Southern California visit www.lsssc.org or call (714) 685-1800 ext. 1213.

About Lutheran Social Services of Southern California

For 78 years, Lutheran Social Services of Southern California (LSSSC) has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to helping the most vulnerable families and individuals in Southern California. LSSSC is a social ministry organization with the Lutheran Services of America, one of the largest health and human service networks in America. Partners and funders include the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, and US Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services. The history of LSSSC dates back to 1944 when a handful of congregants from Lutheran churches in San Diego began providing services and resources to veterans returning home. This group joined with like-minded congregants in Los Angeles and formed Lutheran Social Services in 1946. Today, LSSSC employs almost 200 caring and dedicated staff that deliver more than 30 programs across six counties. Ignited by faith, we live out God’s love by embracing, equipping, and empowering vulnerable people in Southern California.

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