Judge strikes down city's approval of a Hollywood Target — again

The L.A. Times reports:

A judge has delivered a humiliating new legal defeat to Los Angeles elected officials, striking down the city’s approval of a Hollywood Target shopping center for the second time in three years.

Target’s partially built, three-story structure has sat empty since 2014, when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard L. Fruin Jr. concluded that the City Council’s approval of the project violated planning rules. Council members responded two years later by approving new zoning for the site, but that vote drew a new legal challenge.


Last week, Fruin ruled that the council’s do-over on the project also violated the law. City officials, he said, failed to properly examine the environmental effects of its new zoning mechanism on the larger neighborhood.

The decision means that Target, which first filed an application to build the project in 2008, will continue to be prohibited from finishing construction.

Slow growth California , in the news.