Housing to Take Place of Troublesome Park in Inglewood
City officials and residents have never agreed on the vacant lot at 3918 West 111th St. that is otherwise known as the 111th Street mini-park.
From the park’s creation in 1976, officials and residents have argued on whether it should contain benches instead of basketball courts or trees in place of bushes.
Now, a decade later, city officials and homeowners near the mini-park agree on one thing: The park should be closed. But they are still at odds over what should be built on the 7,000-square-foot lot.
In response to frequent complaints about drug dealing and gang fights at the site, the City Council recently voted to close the park and proposed replacing it with a four-unit apartment building for low-income residents.
“We want to maximize our return on the land and it seems like the best way to do that would be to go with a developer who is building a multifamily structure,” Deputy City Manager Lew Pond said.
Recoup Funds
Officials can ask for a higher selling price if the land can be used for a multifamily dwelling, which means the city is more likely to recoup the roughly $35,000 in federal community development block grant funds used to purchase the park site, Pond said. Money from the sale will have to be returned to the city’s community development fund.
But residents are fighting the plan, saying that a multifamily dwelling would aggravate the neighborhood’s parking problem and that a low-income project might decrease property values.
Of the 20 lots that surround the park, 17 contain multifamily dwellings--often houses with attached apartments--that were built before 1964, when the city required only one parking space per housing unit, Pond said. As a result, almost half of the area’s residents have to park on the street.
“It’s nearly impossible to find a parking space right now,” said property owner Michael Sweet at a public hearing Nov. 25. “As it is now, people are walking six to seven houses from their cars just to get to their own house. Our neighborhood would be better served by building a single-family residence on the park,” said Sweet who lives adjacent to the park.
Meet Parking Demands
But city officials maintain that the eight on-site parking spaces proposed for the apartment building will meet its parking demands and actually bolster nearby property values.
“The developers we are talking to have come up with a very attractive building that should do much more for the neighborhood than the park has,” Pond said.
City officials decided to build the 111th Street mini-park in 1976 to keep people from dumping trash and tattered furniture on the lot, which had been vacant for several years, said Parks and Recreation Director Les Curtis.
The park was originally intended to be a small recreational area complete with playing courts and swing sets. But residents feared that would generate too much noise and persuaded officials to omit recreational equipment. Instead, trees were planted in an S-shaped formation to keep children from using the lot for ball games, and a single bench was installed, Curtis said.
Nonetheless, residents were bothered by noise. Almost from the day it opened, the park became a haunt for gang members, prostitutes and drug dealers, Curtis said. “There have been quite a few people that have called to complain that the park was not used for park purposes, that it was used more as a meeting place for gang members and people like that,” Curtis said.
“I am glad the park is going,” he said. “It is just a place that people take their dogs to use as a toilet. I hope the city can settle its differences with the neighbors and put in some kind of housing. The neighborhood will be much better off.”
City Councilman Virgle Benson, whose district includes the mini-park, plans to meet with residents next month to discuss replacement housing--though he says it will be difficult to find a developer who is willing to build a single-family home on property zoned for up to four units.
Multifamily Zoning
“No developer in his right mind is going to put in a single-family residence when the zoning allows for multifamily dwellings,” Benson said.
Pond and other city officials say the project should be for low-income residents because the city needs such housing and few developers have been building it in Inglewood.
The proposed building would contain one three-bedroom apartment and three two-bedroom units that would cost between $600 and $700 a month. Households with incomes less than $36,000 a year would qualify under city guidelines for low-income housing.
