Park Setting No Boon for Apartment Dwellers

Caritina Soto woke shortly before dawn, a light shining in her face. It wasn’t the sun but a burglar’s flashlight.

Soto screamed, locked her bedroom door and climbed out a window. The burglar ran from the apartment, grabbing two purses off the dining room table.

Typical Incident

Although the incident occurred a year ago, Soto and other tenants in her apartment complex say the burglary is typical of what has happened since 1983 when the city completed Westside Park, which surrounds their building on three sides.

The park is a magnet for some of the city’s young troublemakers, tenants said, attracting a variety of problems--including gang fights, drug deals and burglaries. The problems are worse now than when the $2.4-million park project was first finished, they said.

The original plan, according to city officials, was to buy all the dwellings on the block. However, the city ran out of money, leaving the 15-unit apartment complex, which faces Cottage Street, surrounded on all other sides by picnic tables, basketball courts, a soccer field and a playground.

“I don’t think it was a good idea,” Soto said. “There’s too many problems.”

City officials acknowledge that they foresaw problems for these tenants in 1979 when it became clear that the complex would remain. To minimize the problems, trees were planted, and the city redesigned the driveway and parking area around the complex.

The city also hired security guards for this park and its two others. These are the only immediate solutions until the city can acquire the building, officials said.

“That’s the best we can do, and somewhere down the line we’ll probably take over the place if we can free up the money,” Mayor William Cunningham said, adding council members may discuss the situation at its Monday meeting.

Problems ‘Concentrated’

While the police department said it has not compiled crime statistics for the area, police Capt. Charles Plum said the park has not “created more problems; it’s just concentrated them.”

Police Chief Geano Contessotto on Wednesday said he was ordering more patrols of the park because of complaints of beer drinking. Nevertheless, he called complaints from the area “insignificant,” “exaggerated” and “baloney.”

Contessotto and other officials said crime has been reduced throughout the city and this area is no different. However, tenants and neighbors remain worried, caught in a dilemma between the pleasure and trouble a park can provide.

“It’s not convenient living in the center of a park because of the kind of people it attracts,” said a tenant whose car was burglarized and who asked not to be identified because of possible retaliation. “Not all of the elements are good. Gangs meet here and people have had their apartments broken into.”

Another neighbor, Augustina Rivas, whose car was stolen just before Christmas, also said the park attracts trouble.

The block the park occupies is bordered by Clarendon and Gage avenues and Cottage and Regent streets. The neighborhood has the city’s oldest homes, most of them built in the 1920s. But at night and on weekends, tenants said they hear the screech of cars and the thud of loud music. Fights among gangs erupt, with rocks and bottles flung against the building.

“We never had these problems before,” said Rivas, who has lived across the street from the park for six years. “There’s more traffic and more car accidents. There are gang fights at night. People throw bottles and you can hear them yelling. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood before. Many of the houses were pretty and some of the people cried when they had to move.”

Relocated 39 Families

The city decided to build the park because of inadequate recreational space for the 6,834 people living within half a mile of the park site. Using state and federal funds, the city bought 24 properties, relocated 39 families and demolished their homes. The razing began in 1981.

But the city did not have the $400,000 needed to buy the apartment complex and move its tenants, said Craig Robinson, assistant to the chief administrative officer, who in 1979 was in charge of acquisition and relocation for the project. Robinson said that Proposition 13 and escalating property costs contributed to the financial shortage.

Lacked Necessary Funds

“As we got into the acquisition of properties, we realized we were not going to be able to purchase the apartment complex,” he said. “We could not fund the purchase of the complex, yet the city still needed a recreational facility and had determined that the area was still a prime site.”

Although the city recognized the potential for trouble in leaving the apartment building surrounded by a park, “economics prevailed,” said H. E. Nickerson, housing and real estate consultant to the Redevelopment Agency.

Nevertheless, he and city officials point out that before Westside Park, neighborhood children had nowhere to play and families had to drive across town to the nearest park.

William Rieffanaugh, director of recreation, said the 3.86-acre Westside Park provides equipment and sports fields, as well as a tot lot.

Acknowledging that park conditions are not perfect, he said, “Nothing is 100% right. The park might have created some problems, but we never had recreation programs there before. The kids had to play in the street. There’s a safe atmosphere, a center for a recreation leader, restrooms and equipment. The pluses outweigh the minuses.”

But on the second floor of the apartment complex, Claudio Lopez, 14, stood against the balcony railing and looked at the basketball courts and picnic tables behind his apartment.

Lopez, who has lived there with his family for four years, said, “It’s strange living in the middle of a park and having the neighborhood gone. We used to know everybody.”