Grass-Roots Unrest : Lennox Residents Grill Officials Over Redevelopment Proposal

County officials, presenting plans to revitalize a deteriorated stretch of Inglewood Avenue, were met with a barrage of questions from an overflow crowd of Lennox residents, many of whom were concerned that they would lose their homes under a redevelopment proposal.

The county’s current redevelopment plan would raze 882 housing units in Lennox as part of an effort to clean up a portion of Inglewood Avenue. Several business owners say customers are afraid to come to the area because drug dealing and prostitution are rampant.

County officials say the best way to clean up the avenue is to designate it and adjoining streets as a redevelopment area. That designation would give the county the power to acquire properties in a proposed two-block-wide corridor and to relocate residents.

But Hector Carrio, a resident who had gathered signatures of 70 neighbors opposing the redevelopment plan, said Monday that the county would destroy two of the area’s nicer streets--Burl and Dalerose avenues--while revitalizing Inglewood Avenue. Carrio, a Lennox school board member who has lived on Dalerose Avenue for more than 27 years, said the proposal is offensive to longtime residents.

Michael Neill, 43, a lifelong Lennox resident who runs an income tax service on Inglewood Avenue, said residents affected by the redevelopment plan “should think about the greater good of the community” and not oppose it.

During the meeting, residents criticized the county for not mentioning in prior talks the inclusion of portions of Burl and Dalerose avenues in the redevelopment area.

Sorin Alexanian, a county regional planner, told the residents: “That’s why we’re here, to listen to your concerns” and to hear alternatives. “We’ll go with whatever the community decides,” he added.

The area of Inglewood Avenue in the redevelopment plan is zoned for commercial use, but little commercial business occurs there now because of its run-down condition. Instead, it is primarily residential.

Neill’s business “has gone down every year” because of the drug dealing and related crime on the avenue, he said. “My customers are afraid to come down to my office.”

The current commercial zoning for Inglewood Avenue has provided no incentive for developers because of the shallow depth of the lots there, Alexanian said. Including the adjacent streets in the redevelopment area would make commercial development more feasible, he said, because it would allow for both larger and more diverse projects.

A second meeting about county plans for the area will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Jefferson Elementary School Auditorium.

Among the other options the county is considering is an expansion of commercial zoning along Inglewood to include Dalerose and Burl avenues. This would allow individual homeowners to decide whether they want to sell their properties to developers, Alexanian said.

But this option would most likely provide only minimal improvements to the avenue and could result in a random mixture of commercial and residential uses on Dalerose and Burl avenues, Alexanian said.

Leaving existing zoning in place along Inglewood Avenue or zoning only Dalerose and Burl avenues for single-residential units are the other options for the area, Alexanian said.

But he said neither of these options would address the problems associated with Inglewood Avenue.

Any redevelopment plan must be approved by the county’s Regional Planning Commission and the County Board of Supervisors.