Mall's renovation expected to bolster eastern district of city.

WITH plans for the reconstruction of the massive Whittwood Mall in Whittier approved last month, the city is banking on the revival of the "functionally obsolete giant" to pull business east.

Stephen Helvey, Whittier's city manager, said that the Whittwood makeover is the first move in an overall city plan to stimulate "targeted development" along the seven-mile stretch of Whittier Boulevard that flows east from the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway.

"The city wants to create redevelopment zones and encourage and/or discourage building tailored to each zone," Helvey said.

Anchoring the boulevard is the mall. In October, the Whittier City Council approved the entitlements requested for the 60-acre site by Hopkins Real Estate Group and Irvine-based Lennar Partners, which paid an estimated $49 million for the property in 2002.

The partnership will be reconfiguring the 880,000-square-foot property, taking out much of the retail portion and replacing it with residential, in addition to shuffling retailers and refurbishing the look of the place. The design is part of an effort to both recall and modernize the parcel's village-like roots.

A 140,000-square-foot Target will anchor the new site, with Sears, Mervyns and JC Penney fanning out in a V-shaped pattern facing north toward the heavily trafficked Whittier Boulevard.

Long Beach based architects Perkowitz & Ruth Architects were chosen to draw up redevelopment plans that had to skirt around several existing tenants.

The enclosed core of the market will be demolished to make way for open-air walkways, additional parking, landscaping and a 150-seat amph itheater. The Sav-On now in the mall will be relocated to a 14,000-square-foot drive-thru pad facing Whittier Boulevard.

The makeover will also include 130 condominium units of about 1,600 square feet each. Irvine-based MBK Homes Ltd. will act as residential developer. Construction should be underway in the first half of 2004.

Located 12 miles southeast of downtown L.A., Whittier is buffered from the Pomona (60) and San Gabriel River freeways by lush rolling hills, free of commercial development. Upscale homes topping out in the $1.3 million range are nestled in the hillside just above Whittier Boulevard, the city's main commercial artery. Historic uptown Whittier forms the heart of the city's west side, with the aging, gargantuan Whittwood Mall towering over the east side.

Founded by Quakers in 1898, Whittier, named for poet and newspaper editor John Greenleaf Whittier, was the largest walnut growing area in the United States. Citrus products soon followed, and by the early 1900s nearly 1,000 carloads of lemons and oranges were being shipped annually via its Southern Pacific Railroad spur.

After the Second World War, Whittier's citrus groves made way for subdivisions and small, family-run businesses proliferated.

Whittwood, built in stages starting in the mid-1950s by Lusk Co., started as an 80,000-square-foot center where the shopping area flanked the parking lot.

Unlike malls of the same vintage, Whittwood did not see many tenants siphoned off when new centers came on line in the 1970s and '80s. But many merchants were lost to the nearby Brea Mall, built in the 1990s.

Whittier's population of more than 83,000 now supports more than 750 retailers and nearly 200 family-type restaurants, all contributing to a low-key, if rather bland, Main Street image.

"Space and commercial zoning for a large freestanding chain like Target has always been an issue in Whittier," said Steve Hopkins, president of Newport Beach-based Hopkins Real Estate Group. "And Whittwood will certainly remedy that. There's also a strong upper-income, well-educated customer base in the Whittier-La Mirada-La Habra corridor that helped make the deal attractive."

He declined to say what the group was spending on the rehab.

"Redevelopment will bring back that neighborhood feeling with the added benefit of residential units," said Mark McGaughey, first vice president at CB Richard Ellis and the center's longtime leasing agent.