A Rumble on Skid Row : City Seeks to Retake Park From Criminals to Make It Oasis for Poor

On a recent cold, gray day, a tractor rumbled into a graffiti-covered park in the heart of downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row and bulldozed the only public restrooms available--for blocks around--to the ragged and homeless people who roam the dingy streets.

As workers loudly battered down the sturdy block structure, some of the street people milling around were outraged. “That’s a violation of human rights!” shouted one distraught man.

But France Brown, who has lived on Skid Row for two years and was watching from a park bench, saw it differently. “That’s one of the wisest things they ever did,” he said. “You could lose your life in there. . . .” The small park and its restrooms in the slum area at 6th and Gladys streets downtown were built less than five years ago as a symbol of City Hall’s compassion for the poor. Gladys Park began as a sparkling, $500,000 diamond in the rough--bright playground equipment, green grass and clean picnic tables. But the newness soon disappeared as parts of the park were virtually taken over by shabby bands of occupiers who turned it into a denuded and dismal monument to life on Skid Row--drunkenness, drug dealing and muggings.

Shady Dealings

For the heroin and “rock” cocaine dealers swarming around the cheap hotels and street corners nearby, the four toilets in Gladys Park became a handy, out-of-view place for the pushers to ply their wares, users to smoke or shoot up and thugs to shake down victims.

The decision to plow down the toilets was a necessary, if drastic, move in a newly joined battle to retake the park and, according to city officials and advocates for the poor, try again to make it a safe oasis amid the blight.

Indeed, the “disaster,” as some have termed it, of Gladys Park and demands that it be shut down are testing a key element of Mayor Tom Bradley’s strategy for creating a “new” downtown--investing in public amenities on Skid Row. The hope is that parks, restrooms, shelters and other services will improve the quality of life in the area and reduce the need for the poor to wander through the redeveloping office and middle-class residential districts to the west.

“(Gladys Park) is very important to the future of Skid Row,” said Alice Callaghan, who runs a private service agency that aids Skid Row families. “If it fails, people will continue to say from now to eternity, ‘We tried. We tried and failed.’ ”

Jim Wood, chairman of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency Commission and Bradley’s top strategist for Skid Row, agreed that deterioration of Gladys Park over its short life must be reversed. “There must be a debate about the reality of 6th and Gladys and the dream of 6th and Gladys,” he said.

“We will make the park work or we will shut it down,” he said.

Pressure to close the park is coming from an increasingly vocal and politically active group of businesses in Skid Row--officially designated Central City East. “(The park’s) intention, though noble, is so different from its execution and reality,” said Lauri Flack, executive director of the Central City East Assn., a business group demanding that the park be shut down. “It is not what it was intended to be.”

Police officers who work in the area also have doubts that the park can ever be the kind of safe, relaxing spot for the homeless that some city officials and advocates for the poor envision. “Maybe the surroundings are just too overpowering to have that there,” said Lt. William Costliegh, whose Central Bureau narcotics unit makes dozens of arrests at the park each month. “I’m not saying don’t have a park. But if you have a park there, you are going to have police problems. That’s a given . . . if you build a facility in a high crime area, crime is not going to avoid it.”

Officials Pushing Ahead

Despite such concerns, city officials are not retreating. Indeed, the redevelopment agency is now preparing to spend an additional $365,000 to redesign and refurbish the park--and to spend another $330,000 building another one a few blocks away.

No one disputes the need for Gladys Park. On a square-footage basis, it is the most heavily used in the city.

But like Skid Row, the park is a catch basin for a variety of problems. It attracts the mentally ill, bag ladies, prostitutes. In the ominous rear of the park, clusters of young people share drinks and, less openly, drugs. A narrow, filthy alley nearby is a popular spot to prepare cocaine for ingestion and to make drug deals.

Nonetheless, the park, Skid Row’s only shady respite from the streets, remains a strong lure to those for whom it was intended. At tables near the front of the park, there is usually a card game going--to the delight, for example, of Carl McClinton, 59, who is homeless and a regular at the park since it opened. “I just sit and enjoy myself,” he said.

“This is their home,” said Willie Brown, 32, a Skid Row resident for five years.

Callaghan, who recently agreed to provide voluntary supervision and cleanup services for the park, sees the issue as one of fairness. “It’s important because the original reason behind the park was (that) the poor and the elderly on Skid Row have the same right to amenities as uptown residents,” she said. Noting that redevelopment agency money has been used to finance concerts in Pershing Square in the downtown office district, she said, “We would like to have (concerts) on Skid Row.”

Extra Officers Deployed

As part of the effort to reclaim the park, the police last month assigned additional uniformed and undercover officers to 6th and Gladys streets. The park was cleared each night at 10 p.m. and, in addition to making drug busts, police cited violators for a variety of offenses, such as lighting open fires and drinking in public.

The refurbishment of the park will include new landscaping to be replanted regularly, bright vandal-proof lighting, an expansion of the basketball courts and more seating space. The playground equipment and picnic shelters will be removed--families rarely use the park as they did at first--and the alley behind the park will be fenced off.

“We’re trying to open up the park to make it more observable,” said Al Santillanes, a project manager for the redevelopment agency. “We have a new commitment and direction.”

Some park users say the police attention and additional supervision by Callaghan, who has pressed city agencies to trim trees and clean the park, has improved the atmosphere.

“All they’ve got to do is control it and be here a little more often, and all that (illegal activity) will stop itself,” said Willie Brown.

Callaghan, whose Las Familias del Pueblo service center is a few doors from the park, also contends that the park is getting better. “We built it but we never really had a strong management program. I’m convinced if we sustain this level of management and cooperation among the agencies then the park can remain an entity for the people (for whom) it was intended,” she said.

Too Soon to Tell

“If good management fails, then we have to press the question further. But it is far too soon to draw that conclusion.”

Others are less optimistic. “I’m not shouting ‘Glory, hallelujah’ for some of the things we’re doing down there. . . . I don’t think anyone from the mayor on down really knows what to do,” said downtown Councilman Gilbert Lindsay. Though he has not decided whether to seek the closure of the park, Lindsay said he is becoming increasingly concerned about complaints of nearby business owners.

Flack, of the Central City East Assn., said executives with fish processing plants near the park attribute muggings and harassment of their employees to the people attracted by the park. And they are “highly skeptical” that the current effort will turn the park around, she said. “It just seems to be pouring money down a never-ending vortex.”

Everyone agrees that a strong, sustained police presence at the park is crucial. But LAPD officials say officers would have to be assigned to the park almost 24 hours a day to truly control it. “If we go in for a week or 10 days and really sit on the area, people just pull back and wait us out,” said Lt. Bob Byam, who heads a task force of trouble-shooting officers that were assigned to the park in January. “The reality is we don’t have the manpower to leave a unit down there and ensure (the narcotics problem) doesn’t come back.”

Police Frustration

Byam’s officers have now moved on to another assignment. Meanwhile, Capt. Billy Wedgeworth of the Central Division said his patrol officers this month have stopped enforcing the 10 p.m. curfew and have curtailed arrests for minor violations, such as open fires, because city prosecutors do not pursue the cases. “We get frustrated,” he said.

Narcotics Detective Doug Urschel has worked Skid Row’s streets for several years and, with his partner, has made nearly 50 arrests at the park this year. Because of the reputation that the corner has earned and the criminal element it attracts, Urschel said, the park can never be secure for the non-drug-using homeless and elderly. “I do not see that being a viable option. It is beyond that. . . . The nice people are going to be shoved out.”

As for plans to redesign the park, the detective said: “You could put in all kinds of money. It’s not the design of the park, it’s the people inhabiting it.”

One regular at the park, who would give his name only as Slim, agreed. “It’s not going to change,” he said. “It’s a jungle. They’re going to have to destroy the park” to control it.

Bradley is committed to controlling the park, said Wood, the redevelopment commission chairman. And recent efforts have not yielded much improvement, he said.

The city may be forced to fence the park and lock it at night, he said. Ultimately, full-time security guards may be needed, he said, and the city is moving to acquire some of the troublesome hotels around the park.

“We are going to spend a lot of money to control it in the right way,” Wood said. “Ultimately, I believe we will have a civilizing impact over there.”

Second Park Planned

In light of the problems at Gladys Park, some police officers and business owners in the area were puzzled by the CRA’s decision last fall to proceed with construction of a second Skid Row park at 5th and San Julian streets. Wood insists that this park--clean, graced with palm trees--will be different. It is designed to have more open space and better lighting and, Wood said, will be closely monitored from opening day by the staff of the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corp., a CRA-financed nonprofit agency that is spending $10 million to refurbish old hotels in the area.

And the San Julian Street park will have no restrooms, though Wood said the suggestion has been made, but not acted upon and no location has been mentioned, to create a Skid Row shower and restroom center for the homeless. Like Gladys Park, such a facility is likely to be costly to build and maintain, difficult to supervise and a controversial neighbor for businesses near it.

“These challenges are the most serious we face,” Wood said.

“I cannot tell you we have the answers.”