For years a chain-link fence surrounded the contaminated 25-acre lot near the junction of Interstate 5 and California 118 in Pacoima, a daily reminder of the thousands of well-paying manufacturing jobs lost to Mexico in the last decade.
After a complex clean-up effort, detailed in an 8-foot-high stack of documents, officials on Thursday broke ground on a $78-million project that economists hope will provide a much-needed retail hub in one of the San Fernando Valley's most impoverished communities.
Known as Plaza Pacoima, the 209,000-square-foot project will feature the first Costco built in Los Angeles in a dozen years. It will also include a Best Buy and other stores, plus restaurant and office space. It is expected to create 438 construction jobs and 354 permanent positions at a time when many projects are on hold.
At Thursday's event -- with a standing-room-only crowd repeatedly cheering speakers -- state and local legislators ticked off obstacles the builder, environmental officials and redevelopment experts overcame to begin construction.
Attracting dollars to build in the largely working-class northeast Valley has historically been difficult, lawmakers recounted, not to mention difficulties overcoming significant contamination on the site itself, where metals and solvents were left behind with the departure of plumbing fixture manufacturer Price Pfister.
"What's being created here is truly an economic miracle, especially in this climate," said Bruce Ackerman, president and chief executive of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, an organization created in the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake to revitalize the region.
The builder and redevelopment officials also spent months hammering out an agreement with several dozen community groups on benefits they would realize from the project, including first crack at jobs created on the site. Pacoima has among the Valley's highest unemployment rates.
"Jobs were our biggest concern," said Roy LaVoise, director of job development for Communities in Schools, noting that the agreement allows workers to be interviewed without background checks.
"This is a huge gang area, and we're trying to get people off the streets and into a job," he added.
Officials said the project, which will have an 898-space parking lot "landscaped as a grove" with more than 500 trees, would bring hope to a industrial area where residents have long had to travel far afield to shop. The parcel also includes a 140,000-square-foot Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, which is under construction on about 10 acres that are owned separately.
