Panel Rejects Senior Housing in Barton Hill

In a crucial decision that is likely to kill a controversial residential development, the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee Tuesday turned down a condominium and senior-citizen housing complex that had been proposed for the Barton Hill area of San Pedro.

Proponents of the plan, which called for 100 condominiums and 68 rental units in which occupancy would be restricted to low- and moderate-income senior citizens, argued that it would provide much-needed housing for seniors.

But the proposed development generated widespread criticism in San Pedro among residents who said its site--too far from churches and the downtown business district and too close to busy Harbor Boulevard and the on-ramp to the Vincent Thomas Bridge--is no place for senior citizens to live.

‘Just Like a Prison’

“It’s a terrible location,” resident Tony Marino told the committee. “If you’d see it yourself, you’d see it is just like a prison they’re building there for seniors. . . . You’re making a prison for them.”

Marino and about two dozen other opponents, many of them seniors and low-income residents of the Barton Hill area, made the 25-mile trip to downtown Los Angeles for Tuesday’s hearing.

There they learned a basic lesson of city government: that the council member who represents a district usually gets his wish. And they found out that in the 15th Council District, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores usually does what she believes the majority of her constituents want.

A Flores aide, citing the widespread opposition, asked the committee to reject the project at 515 Beacon St.

Upon hearing that, Councilman Michael Woo said: “In deference to the councilwoman of the district, I will make a motion to oppose this project.” His motion passed unanimously when Councilman Hal Bernson seconded it and voted in favor. The third committee member, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, did not attend the meeting.

Only Chance for Survival

The proposal’s only chance for survival at this point is if the City Council overturns the committee’s decision. Both sides, however, agree that is unlikely.

In casting their votes, Woo and Bernson said they hoped developers George and Michael Tumanjan of Torrance would propose the project for another site in San Pedro. But that was no comfort to the developers, who say they do not know what they will do with the three-acre Barton Hill site, at Beacon and OFarrellstreets, which they bought for $3.3 million in 1987.

The site is zoned for manufacturing; the developers had requested it be rezoned for medium-density residential development. Douglas Ring, a lawyer for the Tumanjans, said there is already vacant manufacturing space in the area and the market does not call for more to be built.

“I think it’s terribly unfortunate,” Ring said of the committee’s vote. “I think the seniors just lost.”

Flores Is Praised

Countered Howard Uller, executive director of Toberman Settlement House and a leader of the opposition: “I think that Mrs. Flores showed her willingness to listen to her constituents and I think she’s to be commended for that. It just reinforces my belief in democracy.”

Uller and other community leaders, including the president of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, had opposed the project on various grounds. In addition to saying the location is bad for senior citizens, they said the proposed rezoning would take away manufacturing space in a community that needs jobs, and that the condominium development might gentrify the Barton Hill neighborhood, squeezing out poor people and bringing in yuppies with children who would place a burden on area schools.

They also complained that the developer was trying to get approval for condominiums “on the backs of senior citizens.”

In an effort to combat that last criticism, Ring proposed a last-minute compromise Tuesday that would have allowed the committee to restrict ownership of the condominiums to senior citizens. Upon hearing that, Councilman Bernson sent the two sides outside to negotiate, but after a brief discussion on the steps of City Hall, the opponents decided the offer did not change their opinion.

Reverses Recommendation

The committee’s decision Tuesday reverses the recommendation of the Los Angeles Planning Commission, which in April reluctantly approved plans for the project. All four commissioners present at the April hearing said they did not like the location of the development, but three of the four voted in favor, saying the complex would help ease a shortage of housing for senior citizens.

In making his presentation to the committee, Ring relied heavily on that rationale. He told committee members that the Tumanjans’ proposal, in which a private developer would build housing for low- to moderate-income people without help from the government, is exactly what city policies are intended to promote.

“We have no ideal sites left,” Ring said. “There just aren’t any.” He added that the council should be encouraging development on any site that will “provide housing for our future generations and our parents’ generation.”

Flores aide Mario Juravich told the panel that nobody is opposed to senior citizen housing. “But I think it is the site itself that is being questioned.”