‘Keep Carwash,’ Protesters Say : Studio City Residents Vow They’ll Boycott Mini-Mall if It Is Built

About 125 people rallied Sunday against a developer’s plan to build a mini-mall where a carwash and a coffee shop now stand in Studio City, vowing to boycott the shopping center if it is ever built.

“If they don’t stop, we won’t shop,” read several of the signs carried by the protesters who came in support of the 1950s-era carwash and the Tiny Naylor’s restaurant at the southeast corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards. The residents want the carwash preserved as a cultural monument because of its tall boomerang-shaped steel girders, which, they say, mark “the Gateway to Studio City.”

Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn., acknowledged that developer Ira Smedra’s plan for a $15-million, two-story shopping center is allowed by the corner’s zoning. The rally, she said, was meant mainly to let Smedra know that residents strongly believe the carwash and the coffee shop should stay, both as needed services and as sentimental links to the community’s past.

Success Doubted

Ward expressed doubt that the planned shopping center would be able to hold onto its tenants. “We don’t want to be a city of derelict retail centers,” she said in an interview.

Jack McGrath, a rally organizer and former Los Angeles City Council candidate, told the crowd that if city officials and the developer “don’t pay attention, we don’t patronize, and he goes down the toilet.”

Smedra has promised an upscale development that will attract people unimpressed by other shopping centers along Ventura Boulevard. He did not attend the rally.

The carwash and gas station have been on the corner since 1954, and the coffee shop has been there since 1961. Both businesses formerly leased their land from Unocal. Smedra acquired the property 18 months ago and announced his plans for the “Laurel Promenade” center this month.

The rally was held under the three 55-foot-tall steel girders, around which the carwash is built. Opponents of the shopping center say the girders should be protected, along with Tiny Naylor’s, as prime examples of 1950s architecture.

City Board Acts

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted 3 to 0 to temporarily stop the shopping center project so commission members can determine whether the carwash should be designated a cultural monument.

For Leslie Tompkins, who attended Sunday’s rally, Tiny Naylor’s is more than just a quaint relic of the 1950s. Tompkins has been a waitress there for nine years. Her father was the restaurant’s first manager. Her mother has worked there for 23 years, and her grandmother worked for the company for 30 years before retiring. The customers are like family, Tompkins said, and if the restaurant is razed, that relationship will be gone.

“It won’t be the same,” she said.

Ward said her residents’ group plans to meet with the developer next month to discuss alternatives to his shopping center plan.