San Pedro, a ‘Hot Market’ for Housing, Seeks to Cool Apartment Surge

For years, Pacific Avenue in downtown San Pedro has been a commercial centerpiece, from its peak as automobile row in the 1950s to more varied--and, in some cases, seedier--establishments today. But at 14th Street, across the street from the Dzambas Meat Shop and Iacono’s Tune Up & Brake Center, there is bold evidence of change.

An orange and black “Now Renting” sign is strung across a 34-unit apartment complex that mimics a Mediterranean villa, with balconies, red tile roofing and a stained glass window depicting a steamship. The complex has no tenants; it is not quite finished.

Three blocks away, at Pacific Avenue and 17th Street, there is another new apartment building, this one overlooking a Shell station and not quite so elaborate as the first. Four blocks away, there are two more--one nearly finished, the other still a wooden shell.

Housing developers, it seems, have discovered Pacific Avenue.

Bring Life to Avenue

City officials say they don’t mind the apartments; they hope residential development, which is permitted in the commercially zoned strip, will bring a little life to Pacific Avenue, a key artery in the downtown revitalization area.

But they do mind the dearth of landscaping around the new projects. And they are disturbed by how close the apartments are built to the sidewalk on Pacific Avenue, which makes them loom over the street. David Kunzman, a city planner assigned to San Pedro, has a name for the visual effect this creates: “The phrase I use is ‘Canyon City.’ ”

Such problems, however, do not end on Pacific Avenue. They are indicative of a larger story in San Pedro, where officials know that spiraling land prices and an increasing reputation as a “hot market” are attracting housing developers like flies to sticky paper.

This week alone, Los Angeles city officials twice confronted issues relating to multifamily housing in San Pedro, and how to control its growth. On Tuesday, the council’s Planning and Environment Committee adopted a motion recommending 15-foot setbacks for all residential developments on Pacific Avenue, from Oliver Street to Hamilton Avenue.

Require Landscaping Plans

The motion, which was introduced by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and still must be passed by the full council, would also require developers to propose a landscape plan for each project. The plans would need approval from the city Planning Department.

On Wednesday, at Flores’ request, the council extended for six months a moratorium on building multifamily housing in another section of San Pedro, the Upland neighborhood, where residents have complained that developers are destroying an established single-family neighborhood by tearing down houses to build apartment complexes.

In the motion relating to Pacific Avenue, Flores said she hoped to “improve the aesthetic quality of this critically important commercial corridor.”

But some say setbacks and landscaping alone cannot accomplish that.

Leron Gubler, executive director of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, suggested creating a specific plan to govern growth on Pacific Avenue. He said that although the chamber has not taken a formal stand, he believes too much residential development could thwart efforts to revitalize San Pedro’s downtown business district.

However, Gubler said he is not against all residential building on Pacific Avenue and is concerned that the 15-foot residential setback requirement could prevent development of small lots. He said at least one developer has expressed similar concerns.

“Pacific Avenue is a street in transition,” Gubler declared. “The setback ordinance will not solve all the problems. . . . We need to decide where we want to direct that residential growth. What areas do we want to preserve for commercial?”

San Pedro is a stable, ethnically diverse community, where people take pride in being lifelong residents. Much of it is single-family housing.

The growth of multifamily housing along Pacific Avenue, as well as in the Upland neighborhood, is in part the result of the San Pedro community plan. Enacted in 1984, the plan rezoned San Pedro and eliminated much of the land available for multifamily development. This down-zoning, as it is called, was intended to limit growth in residential neighborhoods. But its effect was to force developers to look elsewhere.

Both the Upland neighborhood and Pacific Avenue were ripe because the zoning was proper.

In addition, Gubler said Pacific Avenue, with its small lots, has limited appeal for modern commercial development in which buildings are razed and replaced by strip malls, with off-street parking in front of the stores. And the commercial growth on long stretches like Gaffey Street and Western Avenue has left Pacific Avenue, which is 30 blocks long, with more commercial space than it can fill.

In the Upland section--an eight-block neighborhood bounded by Upland Avenue, Cabrillo Avenue, Summerland Avenue and Bandini Street--developers found it was lucrative to buy moderately priced single-family homes and knock them down to build three- and four-unit apartment buildings, which are permitted there under the zoning code.

According to Flores aide Mario Juravich, when several new apartment buildings suddenly went up, residents petitioned Flores in May for a change in zoning. Flores requested the change six months ago. The moratorium, in effect while the zone change is being studied, is designed to keep any new construction to single-family homes or duplexes. The zone change would do the same.

Both Juravich and Kunzman, the city planner, said that within the last year, they have been inundated with calls from developers who are interested in building apartments in San Pedro.

San Pedro Is ‘Hot’

“I’m getting them, literally, from the East Coast and from San Francisco,” Kunzman said. “We have people who are players in Westwood and developers in the Valley, inquiring and wanting to know about San Pedro, and they almost invariably start the conversation (by saying), ‘I’ve heard that San Pedro is hot.’ ”

As this interest continues, Kunzman predicted, officials and residents will be forced with increasing frequency to face issues like those on Pacific Avenue and in the Upland neighborhood.

“I think that the greater community of San Pedro is really not aware” that in places like the Upland--and wherever apartments are permitted--there is the potential for development to change the character of San Pedro “from one of permanence to one of transient population,” Kunzman said. “I think they’re just now getting a feeling.”