The owner of Restaurant Depot is under contract to purchase about 11 acres of undeveloped land in North Hills, planning to invest about $20 million in a massive warehouse project. New York-based Jetro Holdings has agreed to purchase the lot, located just north of Van Nuys Airport, from Anheuser-Busch InBev for about $10 million, said Vice President Ruben Vogel of Restaurant Depot. He said Restaurant Depot is looking to replace its crowded warehouse in Van Nuys with a facility that is about 30,000 square feet larger. “We have totally outgrown (the current warehouse),” he said. “We can’t park people safely and in a good manner. We can’t hold the product that we want.” Restaurant Depot sells food, equipment and supplies to restaurants, bakers, caterers, non-profits and others, but does not sell to the public. The wholesale food service supplier employs about 85 workers in Van Nuys. Restaurant Depot has been searching for a new location for about five years. It settled on the North Hills field, located at 16140 W. Chase Street, because it’s central to numerous Valley restaurant customers and there are not “many pieces of dirt that size in the Valley” left, Vogel said. Plans for the lot call for a 38-foot high warehouse with 82,638 square feet of floor area and 287 parking spaces, according to documents filed with the city of Los Angeles. The new location would allow Restaurant Depot to increase staffing, provide adequate parking, expand the freezer and sell more products compared with the current Van Nuys warehouse, which the wholesale supplier currently leases, Vogel said. The Van Nuys warehouse would close if the North Hills project is built. Anheuser-Busch purchased the land in the 1960s for overflow parking for the former Busch Gardens theme park that once resided nearby at the company’s Van Nuys brewery. “Like any organization, we routinely evaluate properties that are not essential to our operations,” Anheuser-Busch said in a statement emailed by a company spokesman. “To that end, we are in the process of selling an undeveloped and unused 11-acre site located near our Los Angeles brewery.” Paul Dumont, chair of the land use committee of the North Hills West Neighborhood Council, said in years past, prostitutes and drug users parked along the Southside of Chase Street adjacent to the vacant lot and homeless individuals spent the night on the field. However, he said he hasn’t heard neighbors complain about the issues for more than a year. Signs on Chase Street warn that the vacant property is “under security watch.” If the new Restaurant Depot facility is built, about 25 to 35 new employees would be immediately hired, Vogel said. Between acquiring the land and building and furnishing the warehouse, Jetro plans to spend about $20 million, he said. The project is currently meandering through the development approval process because, among other things, the land would need to be rezoned from residential to commercial use. Vogel said Jetro would not purchase the property prior to city approvals being acquired. Vogel pledged to work with community groups and to “review all plans ahead of time” with neighbors. A Facebook page was launched May 31. Green space and a concrete sound buffer would separate the adjacent residential neighborhood from the new warehouse, Vogel said. Dumont said he hasn’t taken a position yet on the Restaurant Depot proposal and is waiting to hear from stakeholders at a public meeting likely to be held in mid-July. Historically, any land-use changes in the North Hills West neighborhood have been vigorously opposed by “vocal anti-growth zealots,” Dumont said. “We look forward to inclusive meetings,” Dumont said. “It will be one of the larger projects (proposed) in our area in a long time.” Approval from a neighborhood council is not necessary, but carries political influence. A timeline for groundbreaking and an opening depends on the pace of gaining needed approvals, Vogel said. Ideally, he said, a groundbreaking could occur in six to nine months, with the warehouse opening around this time next year. “We’d like to do it as soon as possible,” he said.
Restaurant Depot Plans New Warehouse in North Hills
