W. Hollywood’s East Side Seeks New Image : Neighborhoods: East End Community Action group flexes its political muscle. After two successful battles, it takes an active role : in determining the area’s fate.

When dozens of residents from West Hollywood’s east side turned out this week for a hearing to determine whether to shut down a restaurant described as the “epicenter of crime” on that end of town, they boisterously lived up to a label they had earned during the recent fight over a civic center in the city.

They were rabble rousing.

With hoots, jeers, cheers and a near-fistfight or two, members of the recently organized East End Community Action group were flexing new-found muscle developed in the civic center fight.

After a volley of three-minute speeches by group members and other residents detailing prostitution, drug dealing and panhandling at the Oki Dog restaurant, the Business License Commission voted unanimously to revoke the restaurant’s license.

The Oki Dog is a 24-hour hot dog stand on Santa Monica Boulevard near Gardner Street that sheriff’s deputies say has been a magnet for trouble for years. A Sheriff’s Department report found that 6% of the city’s arrests in a two-month period this fall were made at the restaurant.

While the commission’s decision to revoke the license apparently was heavily influenced by the sheriff’s report, members of the east-end group took some guarded credit for the victory.

“This is definitely another pump in the arm. We knew we had to get something good here to keep going,” said group member Ed Riney. “People on the east side are starting to realize we have the muscle to improve our lot.”

Members of the group, which claims about 30 active members, had circulated about 5,000 leaflets about the Tuesday hearing, imploring east-side residents to testify. Many of the speakers said they would not have known about it otherwise. The hearing turned into a sort of recruitment session for the organization, as several people from the crowd joined on the spot.

East End Community Action is the most visible and active citizen’s group to emerge from the east side of town, long viewed as the ugly stepsister to the sparkling west end of West Hollywood, which bills itself as the “creative city.” Members say that the discontent along the eastern corridor of Santa Monica Boulevard has a long history, but that it took a “slap in the face” to bring individuals together into a political force.

The rude awakening for many east-end residents was the proposal to build a lavish civic center to house the city government in West Hollywood Park on the west end. East-end residents coalesced in the effort to defeat the civic center on the ballot, arguing that building a City Hall east of Crescent Heights Boulevard would make the city government more accountable to the city’s poorer half.

“A lot of people felt they had been abandoned. They saw the civic center as the classic example of west side intolerance,” Riney said.

Councilman Steve Schulte, who led the charge against the civic center and lives in the eastern half of the city, said that campaign taught people how to fight City Hall by going door-to-door.

“It showed them they could organize, that they could take on the status quo,” Schulte said.

“One of the problems had been that no one had actually confronted the city, except in a piecemeal fashion,” said Ron Goins, chairman of the group. “We are one of the first organizations on this end to actually give the city trouble. And that’s because they have given us trouble.”

The run-down conditions, higher crime rates and shabby buildings on the east end are products of city neglect, residents say. In sharp contrast to the hostility toward development that prevails on the west side of town, members of the east-end group actively seek development. A better mix of shops and businesses, they say, would be a significant stop toward making the east end a more livable neighborhood.

The group claims it will continue to be non-partisan, like West Hollywood West, the group’s counterpart on the west side of town. Though Schulte was instrumental in the east-end group’s formation during the anti-civic center campaign, the group has tenaciously maintained it will follow its own agenda.

Even at the election-night party celebrating the defeat of the civic center, members of the new group were seething over Schulte’s support for reinstating a controversial feeding program for the homeless in Plummer Park--the only park on the east side of town. East-end residents say the feeding program has brought crime and a variety of nuisances to the area. Schulte and Councilman John Heilman, who frequently oppose one another on major issues, have come under fire from the group, but for different reasons.

“Heilman has long been blind to the east end. Schulte helped us defeat the civic center, but then turned around and kept the bums in our front yards,” Goins said.

Heilman and Schulte welcomed the organization of the east end, acknowledging that the city government may have focused primarily on west-side concerns.

“I agree with people who say we have not done enough,” Heilman said.

Although group members say they will attack east-side problems issue by issue--they say they will now wage an all-out fight against the Plummer Park feeding program and have begun a mailing campaign--they also hope to have substantial influence on next April’s council elections.

“I don’t think we will field our own candidates in the foreseeable future, but I think we agree there needs to be change. It is time for some new blood on the council,” Goins said.

Council candidates appear to be taking the group and its aims seriously. Two candidates have already held meetings with east-end leaders.

“We had a voter turnout of 19% (in the civic center election) when the county could only get 12%, said Tad Bright, a member of the east-end group. “I think our City Council had better listen to us.”