Trail Drive : Glassell Park: A resident works to preserve the area’s network of informal foot paths before houses are built on top of them.

Visitors to the Glassell Park home of Andy Montealegre dare not whisper the word “walk” unless they really intend to take one with Rita, his 3-year-old dog of uncertain parentage.

She can barely contain herself at the mere mention of a race down the dirt paths that traverse Glassell Park’s scenic hillsides. And Montealegre, 37, admits that he has grown nearly as fond of their daily romps as Rita.

With an eye toward the real estate signs sprouting from Glassell Park’s grassy fields and slopes, Montealegre says he hopes to preserve forever the area’s informal walking trails before houses are built over them.

He has mapped the lacework pattern of dirt trails on the neighborhood’s hillsides, bordering rows of new houses at places, forging through wildflower-covered meadows and up steep, wooded hills at others.

He hopes to have the map and language protecting the trails included in the area’s growth plan. Property owners would be required to dedicate easements to the trails that cross their properties as a condition of obtaining development permits.

Montealegre concedes that the odds are against him. Footings for new houses already encroach on some of the trails. And Montealegre, who works as a Los Angeles city planner on projects in other parts of the city, anticipates heated opposition from landowners who may bristle at the notion of giving up property for trail easements.

Yet Montealegre presses ahead, firmly believing that a well-thought-out trail system is necessary to protect the natural ambience that attracted him to the neighborhood two years ago.

“I lived in Hollywood before this, where people don’t walk at all,” Montealegre said. “It was a pretty rough neighborhood. When I started looking at houses up here, the thing that pushed it over the top was the trails. You could come home and walk at night, even though you live in the city.”

Evening hikes through the neighborhood introduced Montealegre to many of the residents who shared his fondness for the foot paths. Older folks hike the trails for exercise, he said. New parents carry babies along the paths in backpacks. Kids blaze new trails for adventure.

“People on the trails know each other,” Montealegre said, “especially the dog-walkers.”

He concluded that the neighborhood camaraderie fostered by the trails could only be protected through some sort of permanent planning mechanism, because many of the streets in Glassell Park are too narrow to safely accommodate walkers and there are few sidewalks.

Coincidentally, a citizens advisory committee appointed by Los Angeles City Council members Gloria Molina and Richard Alatorre was already working on a plan for future development of Mt. Washington and Glassell Park. If adopted, the Mt. Washington/Glassell Park Neighborhood Specific Plan would establish the rules for future development of the area. Among the issues it addresses are house size, scenic corridors, parking and native plants.

Using his planning expertise, Montealegre presented the citizens advisory committee with the proposal to require dedication of easements for existing trails upon the issuance of tract or parcel maps or building permits.

Provisions would make the city responsible for drainage, slope cuts and landscaping of the trails to protect the rights and privacy of property owners as well as those of the people who use the trails, Montealegre said.

“You can’t do this without being concerned about security and privacy,” he said. “I strongly believe you can do it, but when you bring it up, it scares people because of those issues.”

Although the citizens advisory group agreed to insert Montealegre’s proposal into the Mt. Washington/Glassell Park Neighborhood Specific Plan, the prospects for designated walking trails still don’t look good. The citizens group itself is at bitter odds with the Los Angeles Planning Department over other subjects, such as house sizes on hillsides, making the future of the entire plan uncertain. Molina has expressed her opposition to forced trail dedications on private property.

In any case, there is no working prototype in Los Angeles for the kind of trail system Montealegre envisions: permanent, but maintained only enough to guarantee its preservation, without being overly landscaped or paved.

A similar proposal to preserve and create walking trails along Mulholland Drive as part of a Mulholland Scenic Parkway has proven so controversial that it is unresolved after 17 years of debate, said Violet Moyer, former chief city planner for the corridor. Nearby residents fear trails would bring crime, trash and graffiti, Moyer said.

Montealegre considers Glassell Park residents more resolute. The walking community already keeps an eye on security and makes sure the trails remain free of trash, he said.

Nonetheless, Montealegre tries to be realistic.

“The opportunity may be lost,” he said, listening as the whine of power saws drowned out the screeches of hawks along one of the trails on a recent weekday morning.

An answer could come this month, when a public hearing is held on the neighborhood specific plan.

Pat Rollie, a prominent Mt. Washington realtor, predicts opposition.

“If you asked the community as a whole, everyone would say, ‘Oh, how nice!’ But if you say, ‘Will you give us two feet of your property?’, no way are people going to do that,” Rollie said.

If nothing else, those in Montealegre’s camp should prove more lyrical.

“One of the reasons we moved here was the fact that it was off the beaten path,” said Paul Logan, a Glassell Park resident since 1974. “There was almost a rural sensitivity.”

As time passed, Logan said, “Camelot got discovered.”

Today, he said, “A lot of people are just looking for real estate values, and they don’t have the sensitivity to notice an owl sitting out there on a pole, looking for food.”