ANAHEIM : Residents Petition to Wall Off Avenue

Brenda Duchemin and Layne Baroldi aren’t much different. Both live on Julianna Avenue, are in their 30s, have families. Both work all day and return home to their children in the evenings.

Duchemin lives on one end of the street where many, like herself, are the working poor. They live on minimum wages in a crowded apartment building.

Baroldi lives on the other end of the street, the east end, and owns his home. He would like to sell his house, which he and his wife bought as a starter home, and move to a larger, nicer place with his young family.

Both are worried about the neighborhood. Duchemin fears her teen-age son will become involved in gangs. Baroldi is afraid his investment will be lost to the drug dealers and gang members who terrorize area residents.

One resident, who lives near the area where the two ends of Julianna Avenue meet, has a solution.

Donn Parsons, who lives on the east end, has rallied his neighbors around an exaggeration of the old proverb that good fences make good neighbors: The group wants the city to build an eight-foot, cinder-block wall between their homes and the neighborhood just a few doors away.

Julianna Avenue, like a few others in the neighborhood, used to end in a cul-de-sac. But in the mid-1960s, developers built apartments on the opposite end, and decided to open the cul-de-sac to provide access to the new development.

In the middle of the extended street is a circle where the cul-de-sac once stood, and where the proposed wall would stand.

“Really? They want to do that? That’s weird. That’s bad,” said Elvira Rocha, 19, who has lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the west end of the street with her mother and two older sisters for the past 11 years.

Like many residents on her end of the block, Rocha does not own a car, and must walk through the east end of the street to get to Harbor Boulevard where there are stores, the park and jobs.

She said it would take at least an extra 20 minutes to walk to Harbor, via La Palma Avenue, if the wall went up.

Plus, she said, people on her end of Julianna Avenue would be offended. “They’re going to feel bad,” she said.

“The wall, for one thing, would create more problems,” said Maria Martinez, 27, who lives in an apartment on the west end with her three children. The gangs “would look at it like a territory line. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Still, Parsons says the wall is the only answer to speeding cars, late-night noise and even gunfire that plague the street.

“For us, the only solution is a wall,” he said.

Last month, the group gave the City Council a petition with 60 signatures asking for the wall.

Paul Singer, city traffic engineer, said his department is looking into the request and will make a recommendation to the City Council. He said traffic studies would be needed, such as a count of the number of drivers who use Julianna Avenue as a thoroughfare between Citron Street and Harbor Boulevard.

Another question which has not been addressed, Singer said, is how residents on the west end of Julianna feel. None was asked to sign the petition.

“It’s like bisecting a street in mid-block. . . . One hundred percent (concurrence) is required,” he said.

Those who did sign the petition also agreed to pay for the wall, a total of at least $3,000, if the city decided it was the residents’ expense.

Parsons maintains that he is not trying to start a feud with his neighbors. “It’s a pleasant little neighborhood, and we want to see that neighborhood maintained.”