Vacancies Cast Pall on Neighborhood : Development: Nine apartment buildings have sat empty for two years, transforming the calm family setting into a magnet for transients, residents say.

Two years ago, Ray Pittman’s Brentwood neighborhood was a picture of calm, the kind of place where young families take evening strolls together. Today, things aren’t so serene.

Behind Pittman’s condominium complex, in the 11600 block of Kiowa Avenue, sits a row of nine dilapidated apartment buildings stretching along half of the block.

The buildings were vacated during the summer of 1989 when the property owner evicted more than 100 residents to make way for an upscale condominium project.

But the project has been put on hold because of bureaucratic delays over the project’s design and the relocation of the existing buildings.

Manicured bushes and neat walkways that once accented the two- and three-story buildings have been replaced by four-foot-high weeds. And the boarded doorways and broken windows in the buildings attract transients looking for a place to sleep, residents say.

“It’s like a war zone outside my back window,” Pittman said. “At night, you can hear people trampling into the buildings. Brentwood is supposed to be the place where you can live peacefully in an urban setting.”

In addition to attracting homeless visitors most evenings and wild animals on occasion, the deteriorating buildings have brought vandals and drug dealing to the neighborhood, residents complain. On a few occasions, cars have been broken into and damaged.

Although isolated incidents of vandalism on Kiowa Avenue and surrounding areas have been reported, detectives at the West Los Angeles police station said the area has not shown an increase in such crimes during the past two years.

Residents say they also are concerned about fire hazards.

“These buildings are like tinder boxes,” said Cliff Nicholas, resident manager of an apartment complex facing the buildings. “If we get a strong wind and one of those places is burning, it will take the entire block.”

He recounted an incident last June in which a mattress caught fire on the third floor of one of the buildings and was thrown through a window.

Indeed, the potential for fires and the unsafe conditions around the buildings already have turned prospective buyers and renters away from the neighborhood, property owners and apartment managers say.

Adding to the residents’ resentment is the fact that the buildings have remained empty after their neighbors were forced to leave two years ago. Both the city and the developer say the delay could not be avoided. Development controls instituted by the city to protect residential areas from overdevelopment have dragged out the approval process on the 75-unit condominium project.

The developers--originally Bancorp Development and now Kiowa Associates--have had to go before the city’s San Vicente Design Review Board repeatedly to modify their plans to conform to municipal design standards. For example, landscaping and courtyard areas were added after the city required changes to the the design setbacks along Kiowa Avenue.

The city also has required the developers to find sites to relocate the existing buildings for low- and moderate-income housing, or to pay in-lieu fees. Kiowa Associates had arranged to relocate the buildings to the Crenshaw area, but the plan fell through as a result of opposition from a citizen’s advisory group for City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

The developer still has the option of paying $406,000 to subsidize 53 units of affordable housing in the area, relocating all of the buildings or providing some combination of the two.

The developer has tried to address the problems that have accompanied the vacated buildings, erecting a chain-link fence around the nine-building area to keep out trespassers and hiring a private security firm to patrol the area 24 hours a day.

To help preserve the community ambience, Kiowa Associates also scaled back to 75 the project’s initial plans for 99 units, according to a company spokesman.

“We have tried to incorporate the community into the process and to be communicative,” the spokesman said. “No one has benefited from this situation. The sooner we proceed, the sooner we can remedy the problems.”

Demolition and/or relocation of the buildings is set to start in about three weeks, the spokesman said. Construction will begin in June and is scheduled to be completed around August, 1993.

Residents say Kiowa Associates has been responsive to their concerns but that the city has ignored repeated complaints about the fire and health hazards posed by the buildings.

“An entire neighborhood has been disrupted and destroyed,” said one angry resident, who asked not to be named. “The message has come across that our families and our property just don’t matter to the city, and that’s disappointing.”

Deputies for the area’s councilman, Marvin Braude, and officials from the city’s building and safety department disagree, saying they have taken the appropriate action to alleviate the problems.

In response to complaints, the city has inspected the Kiowa Avenue site twice in the last two years. On both occasions, however, inspectors did not find signs of vandalism or violations of city codes, according to Donald Hubka, the city’s principal building inspector.

“It may be that our inspectors did not see where violations were occurring,” Hubka said. “There are nine buildings. Just because we didn’t see it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem.”

Hubka said inspectors are checking the site again this week.