ANAHEIM : Wrecking Yard Plan Tossed in Scrapheap

The embattled Pick Your Part Auto Wrecking yard abandoned its plans to relocate from Stanton to the site of a defunct landfill in Anaheim, and the Anaheim City Council junked the whole proposal.

Council members voted 4 to 0 Tuesday night against the project, ending nearly three months of debate over the auto recycling yard proposed for the 18-acre vacant lot at 2925 W. Lincoln Ave.

“There was just so much opposition with the neighbors and everything,” said Cindi Galfin, property controller for the Anaheim-based Pick Your Part Corp., which operates dozens of wrecking yards statewide.

“We really didn’t want to battle the city as well as everybody else,” she said.

A few members of Stop Pick Your Part, a group of mostly Buena Park residents living just north of the vacant landfill, attended the meeting to again voice their opposition.

Phil Steyerman, chairman of the neighborhood group which numbered about 100 at the height of its opposition, said he and his fellow protesters left the meeting when they were convinced that the City Council was going to scrap the plan.

“We’re ecstatic that we were successful in defeating that project,” he said.

The city staff and Planning Commission had recommended against the plan. Most opponents agreed that the industrial-style operation would not blend with the residential setting.