Anyone driving past the ugliness and waste that is Valley Plaza has never failed to notice how forlorn it is.  Or maybe it is so bad that nobody notices. Perhaps that explains why only now are the people in power proclaiming it’s time to demolish it.

A classic of mid-20^th-century convenience, the one-story buildings, centered around an interior parking lot, once held a variety of affordable places to shop, eat and see movies. You went here to buy sneakers, donuts, corned beef or get your shoes repaired. It was humble and tidy, probably until the 1980s.

The quaint idea of entering a place of business by placing it on the sidewalk, along Laurel Canyon Boulevard, with a storefront and parking in back, was utilized by architects.

Photograph caption dated April 3, 1957 reads, “At strategic points in the Valley Plaza shopping area are these attractive new signs. Viewing the completed project are, left to right, Norman Caldwell, manager of May Co., Valley; Bob Symonds, realtor; John Hawkins, manager of Sears Valley store; Miss Anita Gordon, honorary mayor of Valley Plaza, and Verne Tullberg, manager Alexander’s Market.” (LAPL/Valley Times)

Photograph caption dated June 14, 1955 reads “Serving first customers at newly opened Schaber’s Cafeteria, 12141 Victory Blvd., Valley Plaza, is E. A. Schaber, owner. In line, from left, are George Thatcher of Occidental Bank; Bob Marsch, vice chairman of Valley Plaza Retail Merchants Association; Pearl Winter, association secetary (sic), and North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Vice President John Hawkins, manager of Sears. Schaber’s cost $500,000 to build, will seat $350 (sic).” (LAPL)

Then the 1994 earthquake struck and it was downhill for the next 31 years. 

Of course nobody shops in person anymore, nobody enters a store to pay for something, they just walk out with it. And then there was Covid which made it normal to destroy commerce in the name of safety. And then there is safety which doesn’t exist when 100,000 vagrants sleep on the streets and camp out in public to make mockery of anything resembling human dignity, civic pride or law and order. 

Now the powers that be, the esteemed “Board of Building and Safety Commissioners voted to declare Valley Plaza, a once-popular mall, a public nuisance,” wrote the LA Times on August 19, 2025, nearly 16 years after the photographs at the end of this page were taken.

When it comes to cynicism about how poorly Los Angeles functions, so many big, egregious problems come to mind: Drag racing takeovers, mass shoplifting parties, red light running, speeding, vandalism, arson, burglaries, fires, trash camping, influencer parties in mansions up in the hills, the nightly car chases, the daily shootings, the dumped furniture in the streets, the fuck you every teacher hears in their classroom. 

Valley Plaza, a 17-acre site of wasteful nothingness besides the 170 freeway, is yet another example of an LA non-use of land that might otherwise be a pleasant community of housing, shops, parks, and nature. 

Nobody would come here during the day, nor would they come at night, and why nobody in power, for more than 3 decades, cared for the residents who live nearby is beyond contempt. 

“The empty structures of Valley Plaza are a burden on the city’s police and fire departments, which continually respond to calls, said City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian at a Building and Safety Department Commission hearing Tuesday,” was another quote from the LA Times.

It’s also a burden aesthetically, and functionally, to have dozens of boarded up stores and an empty high rise right next to a freeway. 

Today it’s 102 degrees in North Hollywood and wouldn’t it be nice to go to the Valley Plaza Community Swimming Pool or sit and sip an iced tea at Starbucks Valley Plaza, or go up to your spanking new apartment overlooking the village green at Valley Plaza? And those beautiful, landscaped grounds with so many lovely flowers and noble oak trees, alongside brick walking paths and wooden benches. It’s 2025. Maybe we can look at 18^th Century Savannah, Georgia for some futuristic ideas of city planning.

What might it be to have civilization on site for the residents of North Hollywood who live near Laurel Canyon and Victory? We can never know the answer because we live in a syndicate of corruption, filth and double dealing, a malicious playland of bribery, lawsuits, zoning, political espionage and wanton inhumanity.

I went there as a curious wanderer on December 23, 2009 to photograph the boarded-up buildings as they closed out another day, unaware that this urban cemetery would still be alive a decade and a half into the future.