Demolition of the Sportsmen’s Lodge events center began over Labor Day weekend and remained underway Tuesday morning with bulldozers moving the impressive mound of rubble at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon in Studio City.

Sidewalks on the two streets were lined with scaffolding and debris dumpsters, and all but the events center driveway walkup has been razed.

Midwood Investment and Development plans to build nearly 80,000 square feet of shops and restaurants at the site, anchored by an Equinox fitness center and Erewhon supermarket, to open Fall 2020. The Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel next door will remain standing and is open during construction.

The Sportsmen’s Lodge is considered a San Fernando Valley landmark, with a long history beginning in the 1930s as a family-friendly trout fishing spot that turned into a Hollywood celebrity hangout. In recent decades, it was a popular venue for family celebrations and business gatherings.

Richard Weintraub, son of late Valley philanthropic and political leader Roberta Weintraub, owned the events center until it was acquired in 2017 by Midwood. After receiving approval to raze the center in 2015, the project’s landscape design plans were endorsed by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission last year.

The committee was required to vet the development’s landscaping to honor the “look and feel of the former Sportsmen’s Lodge garden.” Although the development’s landscape design will feature existing redwoods along with other plants, some Studio City residents have protested the removal of 90 mature trees in the course of the project.