Save Our Community was founded in the movement to resist Wal-Mart's development in Rosemead, California. Now, it has become a general site for news, information, gossip, talk, and blogging about Rosemead. We also have stories about South San Gabriel, San Gabriel, Montebello, and occasionally about Pico Rivera, El Monte, South El Monte, Alhambra, Temple City, and other nearby communities. Your host is Todd. If you want a blog just sign up, get approved, and start writing. Good posts will be moved onto the home page.
Map Perspective
That map gives a good perspective on El Monte. The location they picked has several advantages over the one stupidly selected in Rosemead. The most obvious stupidity of the Rosemead location was that it was/is adjacent to single family residences. By contrast, the El Monte location is surrounded by the Rio Hondo (River), train tracks, and commercial uses.
The original idea behind Valley Mall also looks like it could have been a good idea: Parallel to Valley but designed to be pedestrian friendly rather than suburban sprawl-ly. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to attract the wealth or residential density to support an Old Town. The Transit Village was supposed to address that although I'm not sure if that's going any where.
The idea that Valley Mall could be helped in anyway by placing a Wal-Mart north of Valley is laughable, at least not unless they utterly level Valley Mall and turn it into a similar auto-friendly destination shopping center. The problem there (besides the poor planning practices that would would motivate such a change) is that, again, El Monte doesn't have the wealth or cache to attract enough traffic to support an upscale destination shopping mall, especially one without freeway visibility.
More likely what will happen is that Wal-Mart will gridlock traffic around Valley Mall. The north Valley location lacks efficient freeway access that most Wal-Marts rely upon, so it will wind up drawing most of its customers from non-freeway destinations (mostly El Monte, South El Monte north Rosemead, Temple City, and maybe parts of Arcadia and unincorporated Duarte. Stores developed on outpads of the Wal-Mart could make a go of it, but the stores on Valley Mall would be even further decimated.
Not vacant
There are some houses in that pink area. It seems to be homes among businesses. The articles said the wal mart would be on city land. It made me wonder if the city bought up the houses.
The area south of valley mall is walkable.