Inside the Gates, ‘a Nice Little Utopia’ : Inglewood: When the residents of the city’s toniest areas drive past the guardhouses, they leave behind the problems of more typical inner-city neighborhoods.

They’re the Beverly Hills and Bel-Air of Inglewood, the neighborhoods where the movers and shakers live. Surrounded by massive iron gates next to the Forum are two of Inglewood’s most exclusive enclaves.

The roughly 3,000 residents of Briarwood and Carlton Square--just 3% of Inglewood’s population--include Mayor Edward Vincent, school board President Lois Hill-Hale, entertainer Marla Gibbs, and others in lucrative business and professional careers. Veteran police officers and teachers are also well-represented.

“You have very upwardly mobile people living there,” said Councilman Garland Hardeman, who represents Carlton Square but who lives a few miles away. “They found a little pocket in a gated community of people like themselves.”

Briarwood, made up of 472 townhouses surrounded by trees and well-landscaped grounds, became one of the first gated communities in the area in the mid-1960s. Carlton Square, which has a generally younger population with more families, finished construction of its single-family homes and condominiums in the mid-1980s.

Exclusivity is the essence of living behind the gates of the adjacent communities.

During the morning rush hour, out come shiny Cadillacs, Jaguars and BMWs exuding prestige. Many of the children march off in uniforms to private schools. Getting inside without permission is just as tough as slipping past the team of doormen at the members-only Forum Club.

The gates are also aimed at keeping crime out.

Whereas the Crenshaw Mafia Gangster Bloods mark their turf with graffiti a couple of miles away, there is no such thing as the Carlton Square Crips. The only way to enter either complex is past a guardhouse or over a wall. Police say they occasionally respond to a burglary call there, but crime is significantly lower than in the city as a whole.

“You’re living in the inner city but you’re above the crime problem,” said Lester Crawford, the president of the Carlton Square Homeowners Assn. and a resident there for 4 1/2 years. “We can go jogging and biking and we don’t have to worry about drive-by shootings. It’s a nice little utopia.”

Frank Denkins, who moved into Briarwood in 1973, appreciates the “secure environment” and “amenities you wouldn’t have on the outside.”

The benefits of gated living extend to house painting, yardwork, and upkeep of the swimming pool and roads, all of which are provided for with the monthly homeowners association fee of about $150.

Traffic around the Forum and Hollywood Park race track is congested much of the year, and the gates keep the streets inside clear of concert-goers and fans, residents say.

Not everyone, however, wants a place inside the gates.

Lee Weinstein, who was Inglewood’s mayor when Carlton Square was being developed in the early 1980s, says he’s no fan of the gated environment, although he understands the reasoning of those on the inside.

“I like an open society,” he said. “The elitism that’s involved in gated communities is controversial. I understand the motivation. It was one of the first reactions to the rising crime problem.”

Longtime Inglewood resident Virginia Robinson, a regular at City Council meetings, dismisses the neighborhoods as “a big country club.”

“I don’t think they’re solving the problems of the community by gating them out,” she said. “They turn their backs on the rest of the town. It’s a case of the haves and the have-nots.”

Residents inside the gates have a reputation of keeping to themselves and insulating themselves from the problems facing the more than 100,000 other residents of Inglewood.

However, Vincent and Hill-Hale, both Carlton Square residents, are active outside the gates, and Hardeman, an outsider, said he is seeking to involve more of the residents in community affairs.

Crawford said that residents are busy professionals who devote themselves to their careers and their families and that he sometimes has a tough time getting a crowd at the monthly Carlton Square community meetings.

Calling Briarwood residents “very, very private,” Denkins said: “You really don’t know the people living next door. That’s the lifestyle here.”

Despite their separation from Inglewood’s mainstream, the residents of the two gated communities have a high voter turnout in local elections, and the area, which is part of council Districts 1 and 4, is considered a political gold mine. But the gates pose a problem for those outsider politicians without connections inside.

“If you are going to win in the 1st District, you have to know the people in Briarwood,” said Councilman Daniel Tabor, who represents the area.

Hardeman had a tough time campaigning inside Carlton Square when he first ran in 1987 because the area was considered Mayor Vincent’s turf, and the mayor had endorsed another candidate, Ervin (Tony) Thomas. During Hardeman’s successful reelection campaign this year, he had easier access with Crawford’s endorsement.

A former councilman had an even stickier problem.

Briarwood resident Andrew Isaacs married a woman with three teen-age daughters in 1982 and welcomed his new family into the condominium where he lived with a daughter from another marriage.

But his neighbors objected. The Briarwood Homeowners Assn. had voted in 1976 to raise the minimum residency age from 16 to 21, providing exceptions for some young residents such as Isaacs’ daughter.

The association took Isaacs to court and won an eviction order. But Isaacs appealed, and the case lingered long enough to allow his teen-age stepdaughters to come of age. Since then, the association has voted to scrap the age limit.