Soon they’ll call us De La Hoya Heights
The Los Angeles Business Journal reported that Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Enterprises is buying the Sears Building on the south end of Boyle Heights (for an easy $70 million) for a huge redevelopment project.
Redevelopment of the property has been discussed by city leaders and stakeholders for years. The warehouse is run down, but the Sears retail store does brisk business in an area that experts say is underserved.“There is a huge void for retail in that area,” said Mark Tarczynski, a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., who represented both sides of the deal.
CB Richard’s Richard Rizika also brokered both sides of the deal. “The whole Boyle Heights area and a 10-mile radius around it are so underserved by retail.”
The new owners will work with Sears Holding Corp., the parent of Sears, Roebuck & Co., to build a new Sears retail outlet at the site, Weinstein said.
The site’s 1927 warehouse building has been remodeled multiple times over the years. Its tower is a well-known part of the East L.A. skyline and the property is on the National Historic Register. Any redevelopment of the property would preserve the tower, with its distinctive Sears signs, Weinstein said.
The large retail component is expected to attract a variety of retailers. For his part, Huizar would like to see local and national retailers at the site. “I envision the project with mixed-use residential over retail, which offers mixed-income residential opportunities,” wrote Huizar in an e-mail interview conducted while he traveled in Israel last week.
Ovrum said that he’d like to see the site become more than a simple shopping plaza.
“It is really important to have a major community-building retail component,” he said. “Basically L.A. has conceded the retail market to Monterey Park and Alhambra in that area. It is more than just the sales tax for the city – which is still very important.”
Redevelopment of the site would be catalytic not just for Boyle Heights but also for the entire area near downtown L.A., said Carol Schatz, who heads the Central City Association, a downtown advocacy group. She called the Sears site the “eastern portal into downtown.”
With the millions the De La Hoya put into the White Memorial Hospital, and considering that his boxing roots started in Boyle Heights on 1st Street, I wonder if someday we’ll know this town as De La Hoya Heights.