An Island of Stability in the Midst of L.A. : Neighborhood is marked by prim lawns, curved tree-lined streets and single-family houses.

By JOE APPLEGATE

April 2, 1989 12 AM PT

Jenny Cohen considered moving from her present apartment to another in Beverly Hills some years ago to be closer to her job there. She discarded the idea almost immediately.

“I asked myself, ‘Now why would I ever want to leave Leimert Park?’ ” she recalled.

Leimert--pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, as in “alert”--is a predominantly black neighborhood marked by prim lawns, curved tree-lined streets and a stable mix of single-family houses on large and small lots surrounding a core of apartments and retail buildings.

Perhaps stable is too mild a word. “Once you move to Leimert, you never want to leave,” said Cohen, 39, who grew up in Watts and moved to Leimert Park about 13 years ago after a friend tipped her to a vacant apartment.

Cohen’s single-bedroom, ground-floor apartment has a dining room and family-sized kitchen, a bathroom with a tub and a shower stall, hardwood floors, high ceilings, underground parking and a vigilant neighbor who has lived there for 30 years.

Sharp Lookout for Properties

A block away is a market, butcher shop and laundry. Three blocks distant is the renovated Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Shopping Plaza, where Cohen works in community relations. Her original monthly rent of $205 has risen over the years to $330.

A quarter-mile north, in the single-family section, the original owner of a three-bedroom house sold it two years ago for $138,000. The purchaser, Barbara A. Jenkins, a social worker, has herself lived in the neighborhood for 14 years. One has to keep a sharp lookout for properties. “Something comes up,” Jenkins said, “then it goes.”

Stability has its price: where other residents team up for a Neighborhood Watch program, in Leimert Park it might be called “neighborhood search.”

The Leimert Park Coalition of Block Clubs, chaired by Jenkins, reduced crime with all-night patrols in a van mounted with a searchlight. Jenkins claims the monthly average of burglaries has dropped in seven years from 15 to five. She acknowledged that auto thefts are a persistent problem, but said personal robbery is almost negligible and drug-trafficking has been held to the fringes of the neighborhood.

Crime statistics from the Southwest division of the Los Angeles Police Department show that in February, 1989, in the area bounded by Martin Luther King and Crenshaw boulevards, Vernon and Sutro avenues, there were four residential burglaries, 13 auto thefts and 13 robberies.

Paint Out Graffiti

Although it has a junior high school in its midst, graffiti is obviously in check--infrequent and confined to alleys--likewise through personal effort.

One or two Saturdays a month, Jenkins and a new resident, Adrienne Mayberry, load paints and rollers into Jenkins’ Toyota van and spend the morning painting over fresh markings. Mayberry usually brings her 5- and 3-year-olds along to ride their bikes.

“I don’t want my neighborhood to have a negative image,” said Mayberry, a former union organizer who grew up in the nearby and more expensive neighborhood of Windsor Hills.

Seven years ago, she and her husband, a doctor, bought their two-bedroom house here for $98,000--their start in home ownership. Of graffiti artists, she says, “I just don’t want them to feel comfortable here.”

The neighborhood was created in 1927, about the time Angeles Mesa Drive was renamed Crenshaw Boulevard. The area had been known for its Sunset Field Golf Course and its numerous air strips. Howard Hughes learned to fly here.

Self-Contained Suburb

The Walter H. Leimert Co., developer of the Piedmont community near Oakland, bought vacant land and laid out a complete, self-contained suburb, designed by Olmstead & Olmstead, famous for its plan of New York’s Central Park.

The main streets--Leimert Boulevard, 9th Avenue, Stocker and 42nd streets--were given medians and curves to thwart the monotony of a flat grid. A rarity still today, the developer also provided easements for public walkways here and there among the apartments and houses.

The Depression stymied sales until the late 1930s, but success of the development was confirmed in 1947 when the Broadway and the May Co. opened department stores within weeks of each other on opposite sides of Santa Barbara Avenue--now Martin Luther King Boulevard.

It is not lost on Mayberry that until the 1960s, covenants restricted property sales in the area to whites only. “I grew up here,” she said, “but there were many years when you were not allowed to live here or own property.”

As restrictions fell, whites moved out and the commercial base declined, but Leimert Park remained essentially the same quiet, middle-class neighborhood. Its centerpiece, a triangular plaza with a fountain and benches, was restored in the 1960s, and again in this decade by the Urban League and TRW Inc. of Redondo Beach.

Its retail district of low, Mediterranean-style buildings, not unlike those in Westwood Village, looks uniformly fresh after a make-over by the Urban League, but whether the district will respond with new life remains in doubt.

“Certainly the lack of business development is a minus,” Jenkins said. Dobson’s Market remains a stalwart and the Brockman Gallery has been selling art for 20 years, but otherwise the district is dominated by wig shops and beauty salons. The prevailing hope is that the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza will take off and lift the district into the realm of specialty shops.

Surface Street Access

Meanwhile, the neighborhood remains a place to come home to from work and play, with good access by surface streets to Los Angeles International Airport, USC, the Coliseum and Baldwin Hills State Park.

It’s also a 15-minute drive to Beverly Hills. “I still go back sometimes for fun,” Cohen said.

Her local pleasures include renting a Corvette to cruise Crenshaw Boulevard, and more often, jogging into Baldwin Hills. She meets friends at the Winchell’s Donut House across the street from her apartment for a cup of coffee before their run.

Just coffee, she adds, no doughnuts. “We gaze at the glazed.”

LEIMERT PARK AT A GLANCE Population

1988 estimate: 24,694

1980-88 change: 11.2%

MEDIAN AGE: 34.3 years

Racial/ethnic mix

Black: 83.5%

Latino: 5.5%

White (non-Latino): 3.7%

Other: 7.3%

Annual income

Per capita: 10,641