Wal-Mart has withdrawn its application to build a store at Nordhoff Street and Tampa Avenue in Northridge, according to city officials and the area’s neighborhood council. The retailer could not be reached for comment at press time. But both Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith and the Northridge West Neighborhood Council said Monday that the retailer had pulled out of the project after officials learned that they would be required to conduct an environmental impact review. The Wal-Mart store, though not a superstore format, drew intense community opposition because of the proposed location of the unit in a shopping center that, community members said, did not have sufficient egress and ingress for the traffic that the store would generate or sufficient parking. Wal-Mart officials had submitted a traffic study which, the neighborhood council and its shopping center neighbor claimed, did not accurately portray the traffic that the store would generate. As a result, an L.A. zoning administrator in July ordered the retailer to review its traffic study and to return to the neighborhood council for further discussion of the project. Ultimately, the neighborhood council demanded that Wal-Mart be required to undertake a full environmental review and when that request was granted, Wal-Mart withdrew its application, said Jim Alger, president of the neighborhood council.
