Hathaway to Reopen for Families : Highland Park: Plans call for the former children’s home to offer counseling, day care and other services for low-income area residents.

Two years after closing its Highland Park home for troubled children, Hathaway Children’s Services is planning to reopen the estate early next year as a daytime resource center for low-income families.

The proposed center would house a Head Start program, family counseling services, a nurse to provide basic medical care and eventually a day-care center for infants and toddlers, Hathaway President Brian Cahill said.

The agency closed the 71-year-old children’s home in September, 1988, after Cahill convinced the board of directors that several dormitories had deteriorated to the point that they were not good places for children to live.

The large house anchoring the seven-building, three-acre estate had significant historical value and needed only superficial repairs, but the four smaller dormitories behind it would have been too costly to rehabilitate, Cahill said. When it closed the home, the board intended to eventually develop some kind of non-residential child-care center on that site, he said.

Hathaway officials formed the idea of a family resource center in large part because of the results of an informal survey Councilman Richard Alatorre’s office conducted in the Highland Park community, Cahill said. In the survey, residents cited what kinds of services they felt they needed the most.

Low-cost day care, children’s programs and basic, family-oriented health care topped the list, said Jeanmarie Hance-Murphy, Alatorre’s planning deputy.

Hathaway officials concluded that their agency could provide these things for $600,000 less per year than it had cost them to operate their residential program in Highland Park.

“It just kind of clicked,” Cahill said.

The new plan for the property relieved many Highland Park residents who were concerned at first that Hathaway might sell the estate to a developer, said Charles Fisher, chairman of the Highland Park Neighborhood Assn. Residents persuaded the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 1989 to declare the main house a historical monument to save it from such a threat, he said.

The main house, sheltered by the boughs of a towering white zupote tree at 840 N. Avenue 66, was built in 1905. Its architect, Robert E. Williams, was one of two architects associated with the Arroyo Guild of Craftsmen, a turn-of-the-century group that advocated handcrafted work over mass-produced designs. The estate has been used as a children’s home since 1919.

Hathaway’s request for a conditional-use permit for the new center will be considered at a City Planning Commission hearing scheduled for Sept. 14, Cahill said.

The engineering firm of Psomas & Associates surveyed the property and found that its proposed use would have no adverse effects on the surrounding environment. Hathaway plans to raze two former dormitories to build a parking lot so that patrons’ cars would not take up the street, Cahill said. Two others may be razed and replaced with portable classroom buildings, he said.

So far, residents have not voiced concerns about increased traffic, Fisher said. An apartment building or other development would have brought in more traffic, he said.

“Hathaway has a very good reputation in the area,” Fisher said. “If there were an outside group coming in, there would be a lot more suspicion. But people are familiar with Hathaway, and they know what kind of services it provides.”

The agency is asking private foundations and corporations for the $150,000 needed for renovations, Cahill said. It has not yet found a major backer, said Gail Guglielmino, Hathaway’s director of development.

With the exception of the federally funded Head Start program, the new center’s programs would be 100% privately funded at first, Cahill said. Operational costs for the first year are estimated at $400,000 and would include the salaries of seven staff members.

A day-care center, which is in the second phase of Hathaway’s new plan for the site, probably would not open until 1992, Cahill said. Hathaway will try to get some state funding for it, he said.

Unlike the agency’s residential center in Sylmar, where children are placed after demonstrating severe emotional or family problems, the proposed Highland Park center would stress early intervention in families that could be susceptible to such problems later on, Cahill said.

Children at the Sylmar facility often have been separated from their families by the courts, and about 40% of them are never returned to their families, he said. At the new center, strengthening family units would be a key goal, he said.

Fran Johnson, director of the Head Start program at Options, a social service agency in Highland Park, said she hopes to nail down plans to open a Head Start program at the Hathaway facility within 60 days. The Options Head Start program oversees 10 Head Start centers in Northeast Los Angeles.

Congress recently passed two bills that will provide Head Start with funding to expand its programs, and Hathaway’s Highland Park estate is a desirable site, Johnson said.

Johnson toured the estate recently with Lyn Kubosa-Munro, Hathaway’s director of community services, and said she was very enthusiastic when she saw the facility already had a playground, an open asphalt area, a swimming pool, basketball courts, an arts-and-crafts workshop and a huge classroom building.

“The things we usually put in the centers already exist there,” she said. Johnson also was pleased that the classroom buildings had adequate numbers of toilets and sinks, and sufficient square footage--”those ticky-tacky little things that determine whether you get a license,” she said. Any agency offering child care services must meet licensing requirements set by the state Department of Social Services.

Kubosa-Munro said the new center will seek to establish a close relationship with the community by hiring a Highland Park resident to act as a liaison between families and counselors.

Hathaway counselors also sometimes will go to residents’ homes, she said. And because Hathaway is located at the far north end of the area it plans to serve, Hathaway officials hope to use a van to pick up families who need transportation, she said.

The agency also will hire a counselor to serve as a liaison between Hathaway and local elementary schools. The school liaison would refer to Hathaway children who show signs of developing significant emotional or family problems, Kubosa-Munro said.

Head Start staff also will assess the needs of children and families in their program and sometimes refer them to the medical or family counseling services that also will be offered at the Hathaway site, she said.

Allyn Shapiro, principal of Aldama Elementary School on North Avenue 50, said the predominately Hispanic, low-income families who send their children to Aldama could really use these kinds of services.

“Our particular school community doesn’t have access to those kinds of services nearby,” she said. “Frequently those kids have to go to a county office or faraway agency, those kinds of distances. Transportation is always a problem.”

Hathaway counselors also would help residents learn how to use various resources in their community, from before-school care programs to supermarkets--which often are intimidating for immigrants, Kubosa-Munro said.

“We want to assist families in being empowered to deal with their own problems,” Cahill said.