Foes of West Side plan pick up steam

Andrew Glazer

WEST SIDE -- More than 200 homeowners -- many displaying anger and

frustration toward the city -- attended a grass-roots group’s first

public meeting to discuss how to revitalize the area.

“I felt a lot of support and energy for our ideas,” said Eleanor Egan, a

member of the Westside Improvement Assn., which formed last month.

As for the anger felt at the meeting held Tuesday night at Victoria

Elementary School, she said, “Well, at any kind of public meeting, with

the energy, you’ll hear things like that. It’s not helpful, but it

happens.”

The group distributed yellow-and-white booklets with suggestions for

cutting down crime in the area, raising property values and improving the

neighborhood’s appearance. It also formed committees to press the city to

increase code enforcement and policing.

Their suggestions included reducing the number of soup kitchens,

increasing the city’s code enforcement staff and replacing apartments

with single-family homes and condos.

“Tenements that have long outlived their useful life are crammed with

low-income people who do not earn enough even to pay rent on a decent

one-bedroom apartment in any coastal community in Southern California,

and who move away as soon as they can afford to do so,” the pamphlet

said.

The City Council committed to improving the neighborhood -- which is

defined by its unusual mix of homes, apartments, industry and retail --

in 1998. It hired Los Angeles-based consultants, EIP, Associates, to

draft a preliminary plan.

The consultants released the draft in February after holding dozens of

information-gathering neighborhood meetings.

The Westside Improvement Assn. is only the latest of several

special-interest groups to form since the consultants began gathering

input for their draft plan. Like groups representing the neighborhood’s

business and Latino communities, the founders of the association say the

consultants ignored their voice.

Nearly a dozen speakers at the Tuesday meeting said they believed the

City Council already committed to carrying out the draft plan, which

calls for creating a public square and pedestrian-friendly shopping

village.

“They’re basically just going through the motions” said Bob Rasmussen

after the meeting. “This is all just an act.”

“There is a frustration and I do not hold that against them,” said City

Councilwoman Heather Somers, who attended the meeting. “But it was not

this council that made those decisions on past zoning. This council is

only trying to remedy the situation.”

Both Somers and Linda Dixon -- the only other council member at the

meeting -- said they were encouraged by the suggestions made by

homeowners. But Dixon said she was hurt by the jabs at the City Council’s

integrity.

“To say nobody on the council cares about the West Side is an absolutely

absurd thing, so farfetched it’s almost laughable,” she said. “By no

means have we signed off on anything.”

Dixon said the West Side Improvement Assn. has the same ultimate goal as

the Latino Advisory Committee, City Council and other groups:

“We might all have different ideas about how to get there,” she said.

“But I think no matter who you talk to basically wants the same thing.”