Neighbors’ Efforts to Make 7-Eleven Clean Up Win Out : Lake View Terrace: Southland Corp. says it is also researching its other stores in the city to determine whether the way they sell alcohol is contributing to blight.

The obviously drunk woman staggered into the 7-Eleven store on Sunburst Street in Lake View Terrace, pulled a $5 bill from her coat and wordlessly placed it on the counter.

Recognizing a regular customer, the clerk pulled a pint of liquor from below and handed over her change, even though selling alcohol to an intoxicated person is illegal.

The incident, observed by police vice officers, was typical of the store’s indifferent sales practices, according to residents and customers. That transaction and similar ones became part of a long litany of complaints to city officials about the store, which is the only business on a street with new condominiums and single-family houses worth $250,000 or more.

“This type of business has got to be stopped,” Jim Connors, who lives nearby, wrote in a letter to the city zoning administrator’s office.

After receiving complaints about sales to minors, litter, loiterers and parking lot drug pushers and prostitutes, the city decided to slap the store--one of about 175 that Southland Corp. owns or franchises in Los Angeles--with a long list of costly restrictions, including limiting the hours during which alcohol can be sold and requiring the hiring of security guards and a daily cleanup crew.

The case represented not only a David vs. Goliath victory by a small homeowners group over the giant Southland Corp. It also marked the first time that one of Southland’s outlets had been targeted by the city, which in recent years has used its zoning ordinances to revoke or impose conditions on the permits of small liquor stores and Skid Row bars that had become magnets for crime and blight.

And as a result of the case, Southland officials said this past week that they are researching the operations of other 7-Eleven stores throughout the city to determine whether they are contributing to neighborhood blight because of the way they sell alcohol.

Robert Duval, an area manager for Southland, said he was never told of the community’s complaints before a hearing before a city zoning administrator in June. Had he known, he said, “I would have been beating down their door to talk to them . . . before it ever got to this.”

Nonetheless, Southland hired a land-use attorney from the powerful law firm of Latham & Watkins to represent it before zoning officials and accused a zoning administrator of being biased against Southland.

The corporation’s representatives also said proposed restrictions would be “costly and burdensome” and collected signatures of nearly 150 customers who said they supported the store. In addition, the company hired a well-connected City Hall lobbyist to gather behind-the-scenes intelligence about how strongly city officials felt about the restrictions, before an appeal hearing in October.

But local homeowners pressed the campaign against the store and, with the help of City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, won out: Southland has voluntarily instituted many of the changes proposed by zoning officials even though the company has until Friday to decide whether to appeal them to the City Council. After that, the three-page list of conditions will become mandatory.

If the conditions do become final and the store does not abide by them, the city could take away its permit to sell alcohol.

“We had them dead to rights on this one,” said Lewis Snow, land-use chairman of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn. “I just couldn’t see how it could have gone against us.”

The store’s owners “changed their attitude dramatically” about responding to the community’s complaints after an October hearing on the proposed operating conditions, said Louis Rosado, a Neighborhood Watch block captain who lives around the corner from the store.

At that hearing, commissioners on the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals observed that 7-Eleven stores are “frequently . . . sources of neighborhood problems which are so severe” that new city permits to sell alcohol nearby cannot be issued. Although the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control issues liquor licenses, the city also requires such businesses to obtain a conditional use permit.

“It’s not that they’re all a problem, but there are certainly a number of them . . . and I think that corporate headquarters ought to be sending the word out to all of their franchises to clean up their act,” said Katherine Diamond, a zoning appeals commissioner.

Duval said he thought that any nuisances related to 7-Eleven stores’ alcohol sales were isolated. But, he said, “we’re trying to find whether there are other problem sites.”

The zoning appeals board’s list of conditions at the Lake View Terrace store include a 11 p.m., rather than 2 a.m., halt to alcohol sales and a ban on hard liquor, wine in small bottles and single cans of beer. In addition, the store must seek and obtain a $2,300 permit. Previously, the store had not been required to have one.

Duval, who oversees 53 7-Eleven stores in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, said the company has already hired a part-time security guard for weekend nights. He said a $16,000 fence and $6,000 worth of outside security lighting are being installed, and the store stopped selling single cans of beer a month ago to discourage on-site drinking. A cleanup crew picks up litter in the area each morning.

On its own, the store has installed a system for playing watered-down versions of classical music standards in the parking lot--a move that is being tested at several 7-Elevens as a means of discouraging youths from hanging out.

“We really want to respond to the area, the neighborhood, the community,” he said. “But if I don’t know . . . there is a problem out there, how can I fix it?”

However, residents of Lake View Terrace, which is north of the Foothill Freeway near the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, said they repeatedly complained to Howard and Helen Kang, the store’s franchisees, and even to Southland officials, about the mounting problems. Police told zoning officials that seven robberies and 13 other crimes had occurred near the store in the nine months before the October hearing.

“That location, in our opinion, was not managed properly,” Foothill Division vice Sgt. Cary Crebs said. “It’s been a sore spot.”

Howard Kang said the complaints about noise, litter and other problems began only recently, after condominiums and houses were built along Sunburst. He said the store has been cited only twice by the ABC--once several years ago for selling beer to a minor and, more recently, for selling to someone who was intoxicated. Kang said he is appealing that charge. “Nothing was happening during our 11 years there . . . and we had good relationships with the community,” Kang said.

He and his wife said they knew many of their customers and contributed money to neighborhood causes.

“I like what’s best for the community,” Kang said. “But I cannot control outside of the building.”

Jerry Zimmer, a pianist, said that when he bought a house half a mile from the store nearly four years ago, he was told that it was not safe to shop there after dark. He said he talked to the Kangs and to company officials several times about problems such as youths drinking in the store’s parking lot.

In June, 1989, Zimmer went to the store on a Sunday morning to buy milk and had to step over a man who lay unconscious just outside the door, empty bottles by his side. Angered and frustrated, he returned with a camera and took pictures that eventually became part of the store’s thick complaint file.

Company and store officials “never took us seriously,” said Zimmer, who is vice president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. “Whatever changes they’re making now . . . they’re doing because they have to or they could lose their liquor license. They’re not doing anything out of good will. They’re doing what they can to survive.”

Rosado, who has lived around the corner from the store for 15 years, said the complaints started because the store had failed to keep up with the changes occurring in the neighborhood.

Once a rough area where minor crimes were tolerated, the area has become increasingly middle class with the construction of houses and condominiums and rising property values. As the area changed, residents organized Neighborhood Watch groups and homeowners associations to monitor community problems.

“The store didn’t keep up with that,” Rosado said. “All they were doing was getting the money out.”

Joe Montanez, an English teacher who bought a house down the street from the store in 1990 for $250,000, said the store is cleaning up its act.

“But, to me, they’ve got a long ways to go,” he said. “Our community is pretty strong and it took a few people writing letters to fight Southland Corp. You’ve got to build pride in your community, which is why I tried to stop them. It made me feel good that we did something.”