Analysis of Project’s Impact on Wetlands Is Disputed : Environment: Group challenges report that favors shopping center at site next to Gardena Willows area.

The economic benefits of building a controversial shopping center in Gardena outweigh any adverse impacts the development may have on a nearby wetland, according to an environmental report released last week.

The state-required draft environmental report analyzes the effects of a city plan to develop a 10-acre strip of vacant land at Artesia Boulevard and Vermont Avenue into a 54,000-square-foot Smith’s Food and Drug Center.

“Given the city’s investment in the subject site . . . an economically productive use of the property is considered essential,” the report says.

But a newly formed group of community activists known as the Los Angeles Recreation and Open Space Assn. has countered with its own document, which advocates turning the site into parkland with a family education center.

At the center of the differing views are concerns about the fate of a 7.8-acre freshwater wetland that backs onto the vacant site. Known as the Gardena Willows, the vernal wetland is a canopied forest, thick with willow trees and 6-foot-high reeds. It is one of four surviving patches of wetland in the South Bay.

Incorporating the preservation of the Willows into its plans, the open space association’s document outlines dozens of educational and recreational uses for the proposed park, as well as ways to fund the park’s maintenance at about $300,000 a year.

The city once had a similar plan for a “South Park” on the site. But City Manager Kenneth W. Landau said priorities have changed. Money is scarce, and the Smith’s center would bring in new tax revenue, he said.

The Smith’s complex, plus a 10,000-square-foot structure for future commercial use and parking space for 548 vehicles, can be built without hurting the adjacent natural area, Landau said.

Architectural plans in the draft report show a seven- to 12-foot-high wall alongside the Willows, but Landau said the city is committed to leaving a 50-foot buffer zone between the development and the edge of the wetland to help minimize the effects of noise, light, litter and runoff.

The community has 45 days to comment on the draft environmental report for the project.

Activists Mitch Heindel of the Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society, Frank O’Brien and Sherry Roberts of the open space association, Steven Bradford, director of the South Bay Cities Project, and several other residents say the mitigation identified in the draft report will not protect the wetland and the plants and animals it supports.

The group has hired Long Beach attorney Charles E. Greenberg, a specialist in land use and environmental law, to advise them.

Greenberg said the report, done by consultant Impact Sciences Inc. of Thousand Oaks, is a long way from complying with the law.

Smith’s has always been open to having its market on another site in Gardena, said the company’s Real Estate Director Dennis Burt. “It’s just that the city seems to be fairly adamant that they would like to see this corner developed for retail (purposes),” Burt said.

The amount of money the project would generate for the city has been questioned. Landau’s recent statement that the city will receive about $500,000 a year from Smith’s in tax revenues is exaggerated, O’Brien said. Fiscal experts Stanley R. Hoffman Associates say in the environmental report that the revenue would be $90,000 to $127,000 a year.

“Although the center may stand alone on an economic basis, from a long-term perspective it’s a land-use disaster and very damaging for local family businesses,” O’Brien said. “People can disagree, but let’s get all the facts on the table.”

The city disputes the figures in the report.

“We think it is going to draw a whole new clientele, adding to the tax base in Gardena,” Landau said.