Troubled Motel Is Proposed Site of Parolee Home

The former Mardi Gras Motel at 4026 Century Blvd. in Inglewood has always been a controversial piece of real estate.

The city closed the motel in the mid-1970s because of rampant prostitution activity that continued despite official warnings.

It reopened as a halfway house. Later, it became an immigration processing center and was targeted by demonstrators who chained themselves to the building’s doors to protest then-President Ronald Reagan’s policies in El Salvador.

The building, with its motel sign still intact, then became a detention center for illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. But the city closed it again last fall after deciding that the building could not be operated as a locked facility because it did not meet health and safety regulations for that use.

Now, state parole officials are planning to turn the building into a home for 80 male parolees participating in a work-furlough program. The plan has city officials and neighboring residents in an uproar.

“Inglewood should not be a dumping ground for paroled criminals,” said Councilman Garland Hardeman, whose district includes the property. He noted that a similar program is housed across the street.

“This would be the third such facility in my district,” Hardeman said. “That’s too many felons in one area in one city.”

Barry Rubin, an independent contractor who would run the Inglewood program, responded that the proposed work-furlough program is in line with past uses of the property. He said he has been assured by city staff members that the property is legally zoned for such a work-leave program.

Terry Coleman, a member of the United Democratic Club of Inglewood, compared the proposed facility to a “stick of dynamite ready to explode.” The group of about 100 residents voted earlier this month to oppose the proposal.

Hardeman is meeting next week with Nal Pedrosian, a Department of Corrections spokesman, to discuss local opposition to the plan. Hardeman said he will give Pedrosian a tour of the area and introduce him to concerned residents.

Pedrosian said in an interview Thursday that he is not willing to force the facility on Inglewood even though the state is not required to obtain city approval for the move.

“I don’t want to jam anything down the community’s throat,” he said. “We’re trying to work this out and allay everyone’s fears.”

Pedrosian said he will stress to city officials and residents that only nonviolent parolees are eligible for the program. “I know they aren’t a gallery of saints,” he said. However, he added that major drug dealers and those involved in violent crimes or sex crimes are not allowed to participate.

Deputy City Manager Lew Pond said the city is powerless to stop the program. In 1979, the city passed a law requiring group homes and residential care facilities to obtain a special use permit. However, because the Mardi Gras Motel had been converted to a halfway house three years earlier, it was exempted under a grandfather clause that still applies.

Based on that assessment, Pond sent a letter to state parole officials last month saying that “this use is acceptable to the city,” according to Pedrosian.

Hardeman said he was outraged when he discovered Pond’s communication with parole officials. He accused Pond of approving the program without council input and making a bureaucratic decision without any regard for the residents. Hardeman, who has criticized the city staff in the past and has sought to increase council authority, said Pond’s move was irresponsible.

Pond said he would take responsibility for not notifying Hardeman of the state’s plans when he first heard them, but he said that “from a staff perspective there wasn’t anything that could be done anyway.”

Pedrosian said the state has acted in good faith throughout its planning for the facility. He said he sent out notices to various city officials late last month notifying them of the state’s plans and heard objections only recently.

Pedrosian said most of the parolees will be from the Inglewood area and would return to Inglewood anyway after completing the work-furlough program.

“We’re caught in a bind,” he said. “The families (of the parolees) want them close by and the community members don’t want them. It’s a dilemma.”

He said two other programs are already in place in Inglewood, a 40-bed facility across the street from the proposed site and a 25-bed program for women several blocks away. The state also runs programs in Los Angeles, Van Nuys and Hollywood.

The parolees in the Inglewood program would be monitored by two in-house parole agents and would work or attend school during the day and come back to the Century Boulevard property at night. Participants would enter the program within 120 days of their scheduled parole date.

Hardeman, a Los Angeles police officer in his first six months on the council, said his main concern is bringing 80 people just out of prison to an area that has drug and prostitution problems and a crime rate that is already high. Hardeman said six of the 10 homicides in the city this year have occurred in District 4, an area that includes the Forum and Hollywood Park and borders Hawthorne and the unincorporated Lennox area.

“I don’t want people to fear walking the streets any more than they already do,” Hardeman said.

Rubin, however, sees the program differently. “It’s an organized way of making sure that parolees have a transition before they go back into the community,” he said.