Shoe City will try on Costa Mesa

Paul Clinton

Owners of a small Harbor Boulevard property plan to bring a Shoe City

discounter in to replace a credit union that moved away.

A commercial real estate brokerage retained by Mobil Oil, which

owns the parcel at the northeastern corner of Harbor and Baker

Street, has signed a deal to bring the shoe retailer to town once a

new structure can be built, a city planner said.

“The Shoe City will complement the other businesses within the

center,” said Ed Fawcett, president of the Costa Mesa Chamber of

Commerce. “Hopefully, the architecture will complement Costa Mesa

Square.”

For the past few weeks, workers have been demolishing portions of

the building, which now has little more than one wall remaining.

The building sits adjacent to Costa Mesa Square, a retail center

anchored by Target Greatland and Henry’s Marketplace.

The city’s planning department approved Mobil’s application to

expand and remodel the building in October. Shoe City would be

required to supply four parking stalls for each 1,000 square feet of

retail space. The city issued the permits in April and July,

Associate Planner Wendy Shih said.

The permits provided for the expansion of the retail space, but

not a full-scale demolition, Shih said.

“They should not be demolishing it,” Shih said. “If they’re

demolishing it, they’ll have to push the building back from the

street.”

Shih said Mobil promised to design the building similarly to the

adjacent Costa Mesa Square.

On May 19, a branch of the Orange County Federal Credit Union left

the site for Fountain Valley. The county banker had taken over the

Costa Mesa Federal Credit Union, which opened in the city in 1958.

With the credit union gone, Marina del Rey-based broker R.L. Pratt

& Associates Inc. stepped up marketing efforts on the

5,311-square-foot building.

Mobil had purchased the property in the late 1990s from C.J.

Segerstrom & Sons.

The Shoe City would be the 31st branch in California and the 12th

in Orange County. Calls to Y & M Enterprises, the Whittier-based

owner of the company, were not returned by press time.