Sherman Oaks : Meeting on Mall Plans Draws Differing Views

Officials from the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall and homeowner activists gave sharply conflicting views regarding a community meeting Tuesday night intended to introduce a proposed mall renovation project to local residents.

Mall officials said that a majority of the 75 people who attended Tuesday night’s workshop at the Radisson Hotel in Sherman Oaks liked their proposal to add 13 new movie screens--for a total 18 screens--and 27,000 square feet of new restaurants, while reducing retail and office space at the mall.

“Overall, the comments were very positive in supporting the changes” proposed by mall officials, Galleria General Manager Joy DeBacker said Wednesday. “People want to be able to bring their families to a theater complex.”

But leaders of homeowners associations said many workshop participants were opposed to the project because its focus on entertainment facilities will dump juvenile delinquents, noise and traffic into their neighborhoods.

Gary Holme, chairman of the Galleria Review Committee of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., said, “I think they are just going to push this thing down our throats. They have this thing that they want to have and they are going to go down that track.”

If DeBacker and Holme sounded as if they attended two different meetings, Lynn Solky, a Sherman Oaks resident and owner of a business on Ventura Boulevard, sounded as though she had attended yet another meeting. Solky said she heard a mixture of favorable and unfavorable comments regarding the project.

Solky said she liked the way mall representatives had set up booths where people could learn about aspects of the project, such as its overall goals, theater plans and design. But she said workshop organizers should also have allowed a large-group forum where people could ask questions, get responses from mall officials and listen to other people’s comments.

The dickering over the plans by mall representatives and leaders of the homeowner associations may mark the beginning of another rocky phase in their relationship, which they had patched up in early September. At that time, the two sides announced they had agreed on a set of goals that would guide the project, but the homeowner associations had yet to see the mall’s renovation plans. Neither association has announced a formal decision on the plans.