Blighted center to be torn down, reborn

Dave Brooks

One of Huntington Beach’s worst eyesores is finally getting a

much-needed face-lift.

Developers plan to knock down most of the Beachmont Shopping

Center at the corner of Brookhurst Street and Adams Avenue and

replace it with a 55,000-square-foot Ralphs Supermarket, which will

anchor the center. Other buildings on the site, including the Sav-On

drugstore, are slated for major interior and exterior remodels. In

the end, developers hope to have a modern strip mall serving a

five-mile radius.

It’s welcome news for neighbors like Bob Riedesel, president of

the nearby Meredith Gardens Home Owners Assn., who has been lobbying

the city and property owners to clean up the site.

“It’s been in a general state of disrepair for quite a few years

now,” Riedesel said. “There’s been very little in the way of

improvements.” For two more months, residents can catch a glimpse of

this retail ghost town, a gutted shell of its former, mediocre self.

Nearly every store has been abandoned and boarded up, save a discount

car-stereo shop and a Sav-On.

Plans for the new shopping center paint a drastically different

plaza, one with stone pillars, pitched roof towers and rows of palm

trees and waist-level planters. The 109,000-square-foot strip mall

will have detached buildings to facilitate a shaded walkway and a

drive-through window at the drug store. There’s also talk of knocking

down the abandoned burger shack that once housed Rally’s and

replacing it with a drive-up Starbucks.

Plans are now going through the final approval process at the

Planning Department, which had struggled with the properties owners

to clean up Beachmont. The City Council at one time considered

declaring the center a public nuisance, Councilwoman Connie Boardman

said. Police have dealt with transients breaking into the facility

for temporary shelter and abandoned vehicles and commercial transport

illegally parked in the lot.

One of the problems was that the center’s many owners could not

agree upon how to remodel the property or begin improvements.

In the late 1990s, partners Bruce Cowgil and L.C. Small of

Business Properties LLC were able to buy most of the center,

excluding the Sav-On site and burger shack.

After the acquisitions, Bell approached Ralphs about becoming the

center’s grocery anchor but met opposition from Sav-On, owned by

supermarket giant Albertsons. Fearing competition to its nearby

store, Albertsons used its controlling share of Beachmont’s parking

lot to block the remodel until July 2001, when it finally agreed to

the deal.

Developers then spent months trying to redesign Beachmont to meet

the city’s landscaping and parking requirements. The project hit

another roadblock following a 20-week strike by Ralphs workers from

which the supermarket chain is still recovering.

Eddie Tsai operates the last functioning restaurant in Beachmont,

a dimly lighted snack shack appropriately named the Sandwich Cellar.

With no customers at lunch Thursday, the Taiwan-born business owner

stepped out into the empty parking lot.

“Even if we do remodel, I don’t think it’s going to change

things,” he said.

Riedesel disagrees. The homeowner association president said his

group has been billing itself as the new potential customer for

Ralphs.

“You could say it’s a case of if you build it, they will come,” he

said.

In the meantime, Riedesel and others contend they’re just happy to

see the old center destroyed.

“When the demolition derby starts, that will be a real sign of

progress,” he said.