Piece of the land pie

While often the closure of a large retailer is cause for alarm, observers of the Levitz store on Edinger Avenue see opportunity. But a complicated chain of who owns and leases the property stands in the way of an easy solution on a coveted piece of land, officials said.

Levitz Furniture stores across the county shut down recently as part of the New York-based retailer’s bankruptcy filings. The Huntington Beach store at 7441 Edinger Ave., next to the Bella Terra shopping center, shut its doors Sunday after last-minute sales.

One reason the roughly nine-acre property is so attractive for development is its location, Economic Development Director Stanley Smalewitz said. The city’s ongoing Beach and Edinger Corridor redevelopment study suggests it would be a good fit for a mix of retail and residential space, as the developers behind Bella Terra have proposed.

“It’s prime land for that redevelopment,” Smalewitz said.

So what’s the downside? Too many people with a piece of the pie, Smalewitz said.

The owner is a family trust interested in getting the property on the market, but the lease has gone through several hands, he said.

When Levitz Furniture went bankrupt for the first time a couple of years back, they sold their lease to an investment firm, which in turn contracted it out to a property management firm, he said.

The current lease goes through 2019, Smalewitz added — which is too long to wait but too short to attract buyers.

“If you move into that property, you need to make a significant investment in improvements,” he said. “But you really can’t recover costs for that by 2019.”

The city is in touch with representatives from both sides, but progress is slow, he said.

One development some residents suggested last year was to entice a Costco to the property — they called it a better fit than a defeated plan to put it on Golden West College property — but Smalewitz said that was out of the question.

“The parcel is too small,” he said. “Costco takes a much bigger footprint.”