COSTCO SITE PLAN ASSAILED LOCATION INCLUDES PARKLAND.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Breaking their official silence, city officials acknowledged Wednesday that a new Costco warehouse store is proposed for a site at Avenue L and 10th Street West.

Building the store there would require trimming 4.8 acres off Lancaster City Park, an idea that already has drawn criticism from residents and three former mayors, but city officials said the location is the only one Costco officials will accept.

``This location was not picked willy-nilly. This location was picked after a lot of market research by the company and by us,'' City Manager James Gilley said at a news conference called after the council tentatively accepted the deal with Costco during a closed-door session Tuesday night.

City officials are proposing to swap 4.8 acres of the 70-acre park and 14 vacant acres just south of it to Costco in return for the company's present store building and $470,000 a year in sales taxes.

To help pay for its new building, Costco could keep sales taxes beyond the $470,000 mark every year, up to a total of $9.75 million. City and company officials said they could not predict how long that would be.

A new tenant will be sought for the present Costco building, officials said.

City officials said they will replace every acre cut from Lancaster City Park with two acres of new parkland elsewhere in the city, though they refused Wednesday to specify where that might be.

Costco wants to build a larger store capable of holding a wider variety of merchandise and to add a gasoline station, which most of its Los Angeles County stores now have. At 153,000 square feet of floor space - more than three acres - the new store would be about 25,000 square feet larger than the present Lancaster store.

``We're going to see a lot newer product, stuff we can't get because we don't have the space,'' Costco marketing manager Andy Leachman said.

Ex-mayor George Root said he remains opposed to taking parkland - despite city officials' explanation that Costco's sales tax is necessary to finance city services and despite Mayor Frank Roberts' assertion the former mayors were objecting primarily to get attention.

``There are so many places in the city of Lancaster that Costco could locate,'' said Root, who sat in on the news conference with fellow ex- mayor Arnie Rodio. ``It is ridiculous, ridiculous, to use parkland for commercial property. Taking this parkland is going to be a major issue with the public.''

City officials were stung by the criticism but said they are making the right decision.

``It really does bother me when we have people who helped us to make other decisions and they cannot see this one,'' Vice Mayor Henry Hearns said.

City officials had taken criticism over building Lancaster Municipal Stadium, about the Fox Field redevelopment project, and on the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, yet all those projects turned out well, Hearns said.

``We made the very best decision that we could make in conjunction with Costco,'' Hearns said.

City officials disclosed last month that the city's redevelopment agency was proposing a warehouse-style store adjoining Lancaster City Park - but neglected to make public the name of the company involved or the fact that the commercial center would extend across the park's southern border.

The park aspect was discovered by a woman who was walking her dog through the park and noticed a white line painted across the grass and yellow marks on trees.

Robin Collins said she asked a park gardener, then other city employees, and was told the line represented the limit of land the city was considering using for the Costco store.

Collins began alerting former mayors and other citizens and she said she hopes to pack Monday's Planning Commission meeting, at which the proposal will get its first public hearing, with citizens opposed to giving up park space.

The proposal goes before the Planning Commission at 7 p.m. Monday at City Hall. The land-swap agreement is expected to go before City Council members next month.

Parks, Recreation and Arts Director Lyle Norton said the city can afford to give up some parkland because the area has been lightly used since soccer fields were shifted to the Lancaster National Soccer Center.

``The fears of losing sales tax revenues from Costco are very scary to all of us,'' Norton added.

City officials said they and Costco investigated 10 other possible locations but all had shortcomings, such as being out of sight of the freeway, too far north or likely to cause traffic problems in surrounding neighborhoods.

Traffic at Avenue L and 10th Street West won't be a problem because the city is widening Avenue L across the freeway to six lanes, officials said.

City officials were stung by the criticism from former mayors. Mayor Frank Roberts suggested that the ex-mayors were only interested in getting their names and photos in newspapers.

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photo, map

Photo:

From left, former Lancaster mayors Arnie Rodio and George Root tell Councilman Andy Visokey their opinion of a site proposal for a new Costco that would encroach on a city park.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

Map: Proposed park reduction