Five Grand Old Streets Want to Block Off Pico : An Island Unto Themselves?

To commuters who pack Pico Boulevard en route to their downtown jobs, the street becomes a numbing collection of graffiti-covered auto body shops, liquor stores and trash-strewn vacant lots as it heads east past Crenshaw Boulevard. It is a run-of-the-mill inner-city commercial strip, with little to catch the driver’s eye.

That’s why a left-hand turn from Pico onto a street like St. Andrews Place is such a pleasant shock.

Within a few hundred feet, decades seem to roll back. Along the broad street lined with palm trees are huge, well-preserved two-story homes built between 1905 and the 1920s on what used to be the Los Angeles Country Club grounds. Grand, well-manicured lawns slope gently upward from the avenue, ending at doorways that are surrounded by columns and arches.

It’s a contrast that residents of St. Andrews and four nearby streets are trying to preserve by literally shutting themselves off from Pico.

In an effort that city engineering officials say is becoming increasingly popular, members of the Country Club Park neighborhood are forming an assessment district, which will pay the city between $1,000 and $2,000 per residence to turn the streets into cul-de-sacs. The project may be expanded to include walls that would block the streets to pedestrians as well as to motorists.

“We’re a little island that is under attack” from traffic, crime and transients attracted by the grimy condition of Pico, said Katherine Miller, a resident of one of the streets, Gramercy Place. “There is a creeping commercialism. We’ve had to fight several variance requests (for property near Pico) where people wanted to take down residences to make them commercial.”

About 100 members of the neighborhood association, which prides itself on being the most stable, racially diverse neighborhood in Los Angeles, met with city officials Sunday on the lawn of the Milbank Mansion, a 27-room Mediterranean-style estate built in 1905 by the original developer of Country Club Park, Isaac Milbank.

Leaders of the organization said isolating their homes would help restore their neighborhood to the prominence it once enjoyed as one of Los Angeles’ classiest sections.

“So many people are unaware this neighborhood exists,” said Miller, one of the area’s newer arrivals, having moved there eight years ago from the San Fernando Valley. “A lot of people from the Valley don’t believe it’s possible to breathe and walk around in the city. But this is urban living in a really beautiful setting. You don’t have to return to urban living in a tight little condominium with no yard.”

Larry Burks, a division engineer in the city’s Department of Public Works, said the City Council authorized the development of an assessment plan for the area in May. It will take at least a year to decide how to block off the streets and to determine how much each homeowner would be charged. Then, under state law that permits assessment districts to be formed only if a majority of property owners approve, the affected residents will vote on the city plan.

Extension of Curb

Most likely, Burks said, Pico’s northern curb will simply be extended across each of the five streets (the other three are Westchester Place, Wilton Place and Van Ness Avenue), and some sort of rail or barrier will be erected at the end of the street.

Burks said the city has agreed to close some streets in the Park La Brea area, north of Wilshire Boulevard, at the request of residents. He said his department is also evaluating closure requests from two other areas--La Fayette Park, near Crenshaw and Washington boulevards, and Whitley Heights, a Hollywood hillside area south and west of Cahuenga Boulevard.

Whitley Heights’ request is more extensive. Residents want to form a closed, gated and guarded community, Burks said.

“There are two motivators we hear” in such closure requests, he said. “One is burglaries and assaults. The other is traffic. We take a look at traffic patterns and how it affects response time of emergency vehicles.

“If they want to close too many streets, we’d come out against it. One of the reasons it took the Fire Department so long to get in and find that fire in Baldwin Hills was the general configuration of the streets,” Burks said, referring to the number of cul-de-sacs. The Fire Department has denied that its response to the fatal Baldwin Hills fire was delayed.