Welcome Mat Put Out for Developer : Neighborhoods: A homeowners group in Encino seeks a shopping center in block owned mostly by Postal Service. But it wants no mini-mall.

It may sound perverse, even un-Californian, but a small homeowners group in Encino actually wants a shopping center built in its neighborhood.

The Encino Park Improvement Committee not only hopes for some type of commercial development near its modest postwar tract but is soliciting the help of Benjamin M. Reznik, the prominent land-use attorney and nemesis of the San Fernando Valley’s slow-growth movement.

Reznik--who estimates he represents 15 builders on Ventura Boulevard alone--was invited to an EPIC meeting Friday night by its president, Estheranne Billings. The group wanted to ask Reznik his opinion of their ideas, and whether he might have any interested clients.

Reznik said he was not shocked by the invitation, but added, “It is sort of strange to have that kind of request made in a day when all we’re doing all day long is fighting communities to convince them a certain amount of development is appropriate.”

Billings, a former art teacher determined to boost property values in the tract of 1,743 homes, said her group is concerned for the future of a block owned mainly by the U.S. Postal Service and bordered by Hatteras Street and White Oak and Rhoda Avenues.

The neighbors’ first choice would be to turn the land into a park, but because little public funding is available, Billings said, the next best thing would be shops like those the neighborhood once had.

“What we don’t want is a mini-mall, so we figure we have to get in there first and get somebody interested in our needs,” she said.

“We want a grocery store and a small general store like we used to have--a five-and-dime called Gilbert’s,” Billings said. “It wasn’t just a five-and-dime, it was a marvelous place that had all kinds of things.”

EPIC also hopes for a parklike setting with trees and “a community center where people can sit . . . and eat their sandwiches and talk to each other and look at other people.” It would be within walking distance of Encino Park, so retired and handicapped residents wouldn’t have “to drive all the way to Ralphs or Vons on Ventura (Boulevard). And Gelson’s is very expensive.”

EPIC has been fighting the Postal Service, which proposed building a 112-unit apartment complex on its unused land. Encino Park residents oppose the plan, arguing that an existing apartment house in the neighborhood already generates crime.

Siding with EPIC, City Councilwoman Joy Picus has introduced a zone change that would ban multifamily housing on the site, encourage shops and require all future development there to be approved by the City Council. Her measure was adopted by the Planning Commission in October, but still needs final approval from the City Council.

When it opened in 1949, Encino Park advertised its two-bedroom homes at $7,850, according to an old sales brochure. War veterans were exempt from the down-payment requirement, and a $54 monthly payment was all it took to cover the mortgage, insurance, and taxes. Today, Billings said, Encino Park homes sell for about $200,000. Young couples are moving in. Absentee landlords are being pressured to maintain their property.

Even Gerald A. Silver, a frequent foe of development as president of Homeowners of Encino, called EPIC’s idea a good one--provided the stores are one-story high and well-landscaped.

Said Silver: “We’re not against everything, contrary to what some people may think.”