Home May Be Where Heart Is, but Growth Has Altered It

As a child growing up in Los Angeles Tract 7260, Steve Saltzman played in a quiet Westside neighborhood marked by leafy oak and jacaranda trees and curving hillside streets.

He can still point out the pink, two-story home where he was born 37 years ago and the small white house his grandmother built for $6,000 in 1933.

But today there’s a new look about the old neighborhood.

Above the rooftops of the carefully preserved, neatly tailored homes loom the towering offices of Century City. On Olympic Boulevard, which runs through the heart of the neighborhood, work crews with cement trucks are constructing side-by-side hotels. A two-story mini-mall is planned across the street and a four-story office building has just opened on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Fourteen new movie theaters are about to be added in Century City and a 375-room Marriott hotel will soon create another tower there. About a mile to the northwest, the Westwood skyline encroaches on the horizon.

“No matter where you stand in Tract No. 7260, you can’t look up in the sky and have the feeling you’re in the same neighborhood you once lived in,” Saltzman said.

‘New York Atmosphere’

Saltzman moved away from the neighborhood for a time but returned several years ago. It seems less and less like home, he said. “Some people like all the building,” Saltzman said. “They like a New York atmosphere. I don’t. Most people know in their gut the quality of life has gone down.”

No matter how voters act Tuesday on Proposition U, an initiative that would cut in half the amount of commercial development allowed throughout much of Los Angeles, residents of the tract say their neighborhood will feel little direct impact. The growth, Saltzman said, already has arrived--about 4 million square feet of it within a mile and a half of the neighborhood.

“There’s virtually nothing left here to stop,” he said.

Yet the ballot measure, introduced by Westside Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, is the major issue in the community, bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard on the north, Pico Boulevard on the south, Fox Hills Drive and Century City on the east, and Beverly Glen Boulevard on the west.

The neighborhood’s 1,500 residents, many of whom commute to Westwood, Century City and downtown Los Angeles, are taking sides on the issue, mostly in support of the measure. Green campaign signs urging Proposition U’s passage are sprouting on lawn after lawn “like exotic plants,” one homeowner said.

Proponents said they hope the measure, expected to win easy adoption in the absence of an organized campaign against it, will limit growth before multistory commercial buildings dominate major streets for miles in all directions.

“I’ve lived here 27 years,” said Simon Schnitzer, 61, who added that increasing traffic may soon prompt him to sell his home and move. “It used to be . . . if you went west of Sepulveda (on Olympic Boulevard), you’d see nothing but nurseries and empty lots and one-story buildings. On Santa Monica Boulevard there were just little one-story buildings. . . . They’re fast disappearing.

“Every year it’s something more, something more, something more. There’s just too much of it.”

Aljean Harmetz, a resident for 20 years, said the trees and homes of the neighborhood are largely unchanged. “We’re still a bit of suburban living . . . a little bit of an island,” she said. “But every year we’re getting more and more surrounded by the city. At this point, there’s just not enough room for the traffic. We’re bursting like a sausage.”

Not everyone agrees. Natalie Torrence, who moved in during 1941, described the newly constructed buildings near the neighborhood as beautiful. She said the planned mini-mall will bring new stores within easy walking distance. Traffic is bad, but has always been so, she said.

“In the buildings I see going up, they’re providing parking spaces, which I think is smart, intelligent planning,” Torrence said.

More Enthusiastic

Marion L. Gillick, whose tan, split-level home is in the shadow of Century City’s new, 34-story Fox Tower office building, was even more enthusiastic. She called the growth wonderful. “We can walk right around the corner and find a cleaners, get fast food,” she said. “It’s just a marvelous situation to be in. I really enjoy progress, and boy, we’ve got it now.”

The neighborhood is unlike almost any other on the Westside, according to Yaroslavsky, who has co-sponsored the initiative with Councilman Marvin Braude. Much of the new development affecting homeowners is in Century City, where a 1980 master plan allows continuing growth within strict limits.

The Fox Tower, for example, which contains about 700,000 square feet of office space, is the only structure permitted on a parcel that once was zoned for 5 million square feet, Yaroslavsky said.

So the effects on the neighborhood could be far worse, he said. By all accounts, the community has managed to survive--and even thrive--during the long development of Century City.

In recent years, however, nearby Olympic, Pico and Santa Monica boulevards have become increasingly popular commercial centers. Tract 7260, which lies directly between Century City and the new Westside Pavilion shopping center a mile to the west, is now one of the many Westside neighborhoods where traffic has escalated sharply, Yaroslavsky said. That traffic is the reason he introduced the initiative earlier this year, the councilman said.

“Any neighborhood in West Los Angeles . . . is heavily impacted. It’s hard to choose” among them, he said. “What the initiative does for Tract No. 7260 is to (deal with) the background traffic . . . the traffic that is regionally generated. Pico and Santa Monica are two streets that are principally affected. The people in the tract have been very supportive of Proposition U.”

Endorsed Initiative

The neighborhood property owners association, which celebrated its 30th birthday last Sunday, has endorsed the initiative. It is the latest issue in the group’s long struggle to shield the neighborhood from development, Saltzman said.

Century City, which has blossomed to 30,000 employees, was the target of the group’s earlier efforts, Saltzman said. Yaroslavsky credited community leaders, particularly John French, a 30-year member of the association’s board, for working to limit the size of that project. A barrier erected on the east boundary of the community prevented Century City traffic from commuting through the neighborhood, Yaroslavsky said.

Cars visiting Century City cannot park in the neighborhood because residents petitioned the city to create the first of 26 permit-parking districts that exist in Los Angeles. Since 1981, residents have paid fees--now $15 a car each year--to park on their own streets. Homeowner Harmetz said most residents are happy for the privilege.

“I’m not an old fogy. I don’t want the whole world to turn back to 1966,” she said. “I’m not complaining about Century City. It’s a nice place to walk to on a Sunday morning, to have croissants. There are people in this neighborhood who can walk to work because they work in Century City.

“But I suppose there’s a point at which progress becomes a nightmare.”

Urgent Flyers

Concern over more recent growth led Saltzman to distribute flyers in the community late last year. Marked “URGENT, URGENT, URGENT,” the flyers warned homeowners of 11 projects expected to bring about 4 million square feet of development to the tract and the surrounding area.

The list included two major Westwood projects--the Westside Pavilion, at Pico and Westwood boulevards, and the proposed Westwood Gateway II, a 495,000-square-foot office complex to be developed at Sepulveda and Santa Monica boulevards. Only one project, the 15-store mini-mall, would be affected by the initiative and has been designed to anticipate its passage, Saltzman said.

Westwood Gateway II is within size limits proposed by the measure, Yaroslavsky aide Michelle Krotinger said. Other projects conform to existing, more liberal zoning standards or are protected by the adopted master plan for Century City. Seven of the 11 projects are now built or under construction.

Saltzman said the flyers were intended to inform residents and to bring the community’s plight to Yaroslavsky’s attention. He said he also hoped to stop development of the side-by-side hotels on Olympic Boulevard, planned to contain a total of about 225 rooms. That effort ultimately failed.

“I’d like to think in some small way we contributed” to the initiative, Saltzman said. “We wanted to send our message . . . to Zev and others in the city. We think he heard it loud and clear from us and from others. He’s always shown a sensitivity and concern” about commercial growth.

Well Preserved

Yaroslavsky, a foe of heavy development for many years, described the community as well preserved compared to some ravaged by traffic on residential streets and growth on all boundaries. He said residents are fortunate that the small hotels were not developed as retail centers, as they might have been.

“That’s certainly one of (the neighborhoods) most surrounded by growth,” the councilman said. “But somehow they’ve managed to insulate themselves from disaster.”

Still, Saltzman said the urbanization has made him feel less safe in his neighborhood. During the 18 years he was growing up there, he said, he doesn’t recall a single homicide. But in the year and a half after his return to the community, in 1979, two murders took place, Saltzman said.

City planners say the failure to fund the Beverly Hills Freeway, which would have replaced much of Santa Monica Boulevard, is responsible for much of the Westside’s congestion. When Saltzman tries to leave the neighborhood by turning east on the boulevard, he has to battle a long line of cars backed up at a nearby traffic light. The wait often lasts for three cycles of the light, he said.

Schnitzer said he also waits three cycles to go north on Beverly Glen. “If you want to leave the tract, you have to choose a way that’s safe,” he said. Left turns are nearly impossible and in some cases forbidden because of heavy traffic.

“There’s no way somebody would leave the tract going south on Benecia (Avenue) and east on Olympic. If you want to go west on big Santa Monica Boulevard, you can’t do it. You have to . . . make a big circle.”

Association board member Richard Harmetz questioned whether the neighborhood will be able to keep the traffic off its residential streets once the planned mini-mall opens at Olympic and Kerwood Avenue.

‘Inundated by Cars’

“If an entrance or exit should be on Kerwood, people who have had quite peaceful lives will suddenly be inundated by cars,” he said.

But others think the advantages outweigh the problems. Gillick said property values have soared; homes that cost $35,000 to $50,000 in 1965 are now running $250,000 to $500,000, she said. Century City, the Westside Pavilion and Beverly Center--less than four miles away at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards--are three of the reasons for that, she said.

“We’ve got access to probably three of the most beautiful malls in the world,” Gillick said.

Once the luxurious new Marriott opens, she will no longer travel to Santa Barbara for spectacular Sunday brunches, Gillick said. The new movie theaters will save her driving time to Westwood. She doesn’t worry about crime.

On one occasion, she decided to call police because two men were loitering in a parked car, Gillick said. But they had good reason to be.

“They were the FBI,” she said. “(President) Reagan was at the Century Plaza. I feel very well protected in this area.”