Pacoima Site of Price Pfister Plant Put Up for Sale By SHELLY GARCIA Senior Reporter Black & Decker Corp. has put the former Price Pfister plant in Pacoima up for sale and is currently entertaining offers for the property. Details of the negotiations have not been disclosed, but city officials say just about any redevelopment is likely to benefit the community, which is lacking for services. “We’re not locked into any one retail, industrial or commercial content,” said David Gershwin, director of communications to City Councilman Alex Padilla whose district includes the Price Pfister location. “We’d like to see it be something that serves the community. We’d like to see whatever businesses locate be a partner by doing a good deal of local hiring and understanding Pacoima is a special community.” Pacoima, one of the poorest communities in the San Fernando Valley, was particularly hard hit when the Price Pfister operation moved most of its manufacturing to Mexico. At its height, the faucet and hardware maker had employed 1,000 workers at the plant at Paxton Street, south of the 118 Freeway at San Fernando Road. Many of the local residents of Pacoima had worked at the foundry, which opened in 1960, for decades, but the antiquated plant was ill equipped to conform to the new environmental regulations that came into effect in California during the mid-1990s. Black & Decker, which acquired Price Pfister in 1989, began a reorganization and shifted many of the jobs to a new plant the company built in Mexicali, Mexico. But administrative jobs continued to be located at the site until last year. The location has been deemed a brownfield site, the result of the manufacturing activities that once took place there. And $1.4 million in grants and $7.4 million in low interest loans have been allocated for the cleanup of the 24-acre property, a task that is already underway. “They are in cleanup mode,” said Dick D’Amico, project manager at the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles. “We’re told it might take until the end of the year to get it done.” The area, part of an earthquake disaster district, is not a redevelopment district, which means the CRA has no eminent domain authority on the site, but the agency did spearhead the application to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the cleanup funding. Earlier this year, an Orange County developer, along with Lowe’s Companies Inc., began negotiating with Black & Decker for the site. The developer, Rotkin Real Estate Group in Newport Beach, proposed a power center with a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse and a grocery store. But it is not known whether the company is still in discussions with Black & Decker on the site. “It’s Black & Decker’s call,” said Gershwin. “We are as anxious as anybody to move forward. We’re hoping a deal can be worked out as soon as possible.” Officials at Black & Decker confirmed that they are in discussions with potential buyers, but declined to elaborate on those talks. About one-third of Pacoima’s population, some 81,000 people, falls below the federal poverty line, according to census figures.
