Forgotten Neighborhood Seeks to Join Sherman Oaks

Yet another group of Valley residents is petitioning for a new neighborhood name, but this time the petitioners say the idea wasn’t really theirs.

“It’s not that we decided we want to become something else, we’ve just been ousted, albeit accidentally,” North Hollywood resident Steven Cerveris said.

When the community of Valley Village was formed from North Hollywood, a three-block patch of houses, including Cerveris’, was not included.

“We just figured it was an oversight,” he said. “Our neighborhood was just forgotten.”

Cerveris and his neighbors still live in North Hollywood in the eyes of the city of Los Angeles, but the area is geographically cut off from the rest of North Hollywood by Valley Village.

“We’re surrounded by three other communities, none of which is North Hollywood,” said Mike Russell, who organized the campaign. Those communities are “Studio City on the south, Valley Village on the east and Sherman Oaks on the west. We’re not touching any part of North Hollywood.”

Russell and other residents presented to Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky a petition signed by nearly 80 homeowners, asking him to change the name to Sherman Oaks. “Everybody was very upset that all the areas had been renamed and we were just sort of trapped there,” Russell said.

The residents are quick to note that their motivation for the change differs from that of other Valley homeowners who have opted to rename their neighborhoods to increase property value or lower car insurance. There have already been three such changes this summer.

“This three-block area is already an expensive area,” Cerveris said. “It has nothing to do with property value.”

Residents chose to join Sherman Oaks because “it just makes the most geographical sense,” he said.

Although the recent rash of name changes has been well received by many Valley homeowners, it has left some, such as Russell, feeling as if they are “in the Twilight Zone.”

“We didn’t do this to ourselves,” Russell said. “If they hadn’t created Valley Village we would still be a part of a continuous North Hollywood.”

Yaroslavsky has not made a decision. “We have received the petitions and we’re looking at it,” Yaroslavsky aide Katharine Macdonald said.