JUNK : Neighbors Hail Moves to Clean Up Body Shops

For years, residents of the Mid-City area of Los Angeles have been trying to get the attention of City Hall over what they see as the blight of too many auto body shops in their community.

“Auto body shops don’t contribute to the positiveness of a neighborhood,” said community activist Ramona Whitney, who, for much of this decade, has been pushing to get lawmakers to clamp down on the body shops. “They’re dirty. They’re junky.”

Now, the battle appears to be reaching a climax.

Since April, city inspectors have swept through the area--bounded roughly by Pico and Olympic boulevards and Fairfax and La Brea avenues--levying thousands of dollars in fines against body shop owners for building code violations.

Longtime residents of the area say it is about time city officials paid attention to a neighborhood that, they claim, has deteriorated because of the influx of the shops.

More than 200 auto body shops are located in the area, accounting for almost a fifth of all businesses, according to estimates.

“This is astounding” given the size of the area, said a privately commissioned 1985 report analyzing the proliferation of the shops. “These numbers constitute irrefutable evidence of business development at odds with sound, people-oriented community planning.”

City Councilman Nate Holden, who ordered the crackdown, has vowed to force the shop owners to conform with city building laws. “They’re going to comply with the law or shut down,” said Holden, whose Pico Boulevard field office overlooks a body shop. His 10th District, he said, “should not be the junkyard for the city of L.A.”

Cleaning up the shops was a key campaign promise for Holden, 59, who was voted into office in June, 1987. (An aide to Holden, Coy Sallis, 53, resigned after being arrested in connection with an alleged bribery attempt involving the owner of Pico Boulevard body shop. He has not been charged and is free on $3,000 bail.)

The body shop owners are an eclectic bunch of entrepreneurs, and most of them are angry at the crackdown.

“We’re trying to make a living here, and they’re trying to close us down,” said Ali Ghassedi, 25, whose family has run Gama Auto Body & Repair near Pico Boulevard and La Brea Avenue for two years.

If there is a “Main Street” for the body shop district, it is Pico Boulevard, home to dozens of businesses, big and small, where hulks of damaged cars are noisily pounded back into shape.

Many, if not most, of the shops have workers sanding, painting and buffing cars in areas either partially or entirely open--in violation of city code sections that, according to the city’s chief inspector, J. L. Carney, are two decades old.

Some of the shops use razor-sharp barbed wire to repel burglars, which gives the street something of a concentration camp look.

But it was not always this way, according to longtime residents.

“I lived here for 28 years,” said Eddie Mae Sarpy, who lives near the boulevard. “Pico was very clean, well kept. There was a bridal shop. A bakery shop. People did their shopping on that street.”

Gradually, the predominantly Jewish merchants who had put down roots on Pico following World War II began moving out. Soon the ethnic mix of the neighborhood changed as blacks, Asians and Latinos moved in.

Pockets of Wealth

Parts of the district have thrived with its new residents; there are pockets of expensive homes and some nice shops. But signs of blight have also appeared.

Delicatessens and butcher shops disappeared, Sarpy recalled, and boarded-up stores and unkempt vacant lots began to dot the area along and near Pico Boulevard.

“We started getting concerned” in the mid-1970s, said activist Whitney, a neighborhood resident for 25 years. “We didn’t want to let the community deteriorate.”

Then, about 1980, Whitney recalled, the auto body shop industry “jumped La Brea” and began moving west along Pico toward Fairfax. Although Whitney said she and other neighbors tried to get the attention of City Hall, “we could not get anyone to talk to us.”

Much of the activists’ ire was directed at former Councilman David Cunningham, who, they charged, was indifferent to their pleas to take a stand on the influx of the shops.

“I had written Cunningham many letters, but there was nothing done,” Sarpy complained. Cunningham, who resigned his council seat in October, 1986, said body shop owners have “a legitimate business. . . . We have to be realistic. We can’t put them out of business. I don’t know of anything evil they’re doing.”

Still, he said in a telephone interview, “neighbors have a right to complain, but passing a law is not necessarily solving the problem.”

Relaxed Zoning

Part of the attraction of the neighborhood for the body shops was the relaxed zoning of the area, according to Faisal Roble, a city planning assistant. Until 1985, he said, there was little restriction on the type of commercial enterprise.

Another major draw, according to shop owners and city officials, was that rents were lower than many other areas of the city, although now they are climbing.

Then, in 1985, more restrictive zoning laws were passed, Roble said. But by then, neighborhood residents point out, the character of the Pico Boulevard community was, in effect, closely bound up with auto body shops.

If there is one thing neighbors and body shop owners agree on, it is that up until last April, when Holden called for the crackdown, the shop owners pretty much had their own way in terms of how they ran their businesses.

Now, at Holden’s urging, city inspectors are saying that it will not be business as usual.

No longer, say city officials, can body shop employees work on cars in the open; repairs must be done in completely enclosed facilities. No longer can they use sidewalks, alleys or side streets for work and storage areas. No longer can they act as wrecking yards, dismantling cars and storing the “cannibalized” parts in other wrecked cars. No longer can they conduct their noisy operations at night.

Fines, Possible Jail

All of these are violations of the Los Angeles Municipal Code and subject to misdemeanor penalties, which include fines and even jail sentences if the owners are cited and, ultimately, convicted.

“Our job isn’t to put people out of business; it’s to get them to comply,” said Milford Bliss, chief of the city’s Community Safety Bureau, a unit of the Building and Safety Department.

According to Bliss, since April almost every body shop owner has been cited for some building code violation. “Ninety-five percent had violations” during the first sweep through the area, Bliss said. “That tells you the story.”

In interviews, the owners were confused and angry that, after years of a laissez-faire policy, city inspectors were suddenly showing up, taking pictures of alleged infractions and fining them.

Eugene Glazenberg and Alex Sklar, both of whom emigrated from the Soviet Union, said City Hall is attempting to impose illogical restrictions on small businessmen already burdened with rising costs and thinner profits.

“Right now, it looks like Russia because some stupid bureaucrat decides to do something,” said Glazenberg, who helps manage Enterprise Auto Body & Paint on Pico Boulevard.

‘Pure Harassment’

“It’s strictly pure harassment,” snapped Abe Aronow, manager at LA Autobody, down the street from Enterprise.

It has become so bad, Aronow said, that his firm just erected a 10-foot-high blue corrugated metal fence so that “they (city inspectors) can’t look in.”

Some owners are hiring attorneys and say they intend to fight City Hall, where the ordinances are designed and passed, and the city attorney’s office, which enforces them. The problem, a few said, is that their ethnic and economic backgrounds are so diverse that it is difficult to band together.

Several owners said that in the face of rising rents--it is not unusual to pay $3,000 a month or more for a modest work site--they cannot afford to spend thousands more to enclose their operations.

However, one shop manager said his firm had budgeted $80,000 to build an enclosed work area. He said he believes “it’s fair to force” blatant violators to conform with the city’s body shop laws. More pressure on the body shop entrepreneurs appears likely.

Los Angeles building official Bliss said his agency has drafted a proposal to go before the City Council soon that would trigger an annual $300 fee on body shop owners and vehicle repair shops citywide to underwrite a “task force” approach to inspecting the businesses. Under the program, every auto body shop in the city would be subject to annual inspection rather than the current situation where inspectors respond only to complaints.

However, Bliss added, the city would be reasonable and auto body shop owners “would be given an opportunity to make corrections” before being hauled into court.

“This isn’t a police state,” he said.