1991: A Look Back : Review: The Rodney G. King beating, development battles and a tempestuous political scene were all part of life in the Valley.

In 1991, the ghosts of years past came calling for the San Fernando Valley.

The bludgeoning by police of a black motorist in Lake View Terrace brought long-simmering resentment against the Los Angeles Police Department to a boil and sparked a wide-ranging probe into racism and brutality under color of authority.

Developers, who for years had seemed to put up buildings and houses as quickly as sandcastles, found themselves pinched by a recession and weak demand for their projects. Meanwhile, homeowners, no longer able to readily cash in on rapidly expanding equities to flee neighborhood ills, attempted instead to change the names of their communities.

And longtime politicians, from City Council members to state lawmakers, were made to answer for their past actions by lawyers, investigators and a disenchanted electorate.

Playing itself out in the present, the past forced Valley residents in 1991 to take stock of the future.

Seared into the minds of residents throughout Los Angeles were the videotaped images of the beating in March of motorist Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers.

That oft-replayed tape, and the scrutiny of the Police Department that followed, confirmed long-held community concerns about the department and resulted in Police Chief Daryl F. Gates agreeing to step down in April.

True to the Valley’s conservative roots, many community leaders and city officials, including Councilmen Ernani Bernardi, who represents most of the northeast Valley, and Hal Bernson, whose district is in the north Valley, staunchly supported Gates in the face of calls for his resignation. But the Valley also became the laboratory for changes that may affect the entire force.

Seeking to repair its relationship with the community, the department instituted “community-based policing” at the five stations in the Valley. In May, more than 30 officers were assigned to meet with residents, merchants and religious leaders in an attempt to build rapport.

The pilot project has been particularly successful in the Foothill Division, where the King beating occurred, and where 10 new minority supervisors, including the division’s first Latino captain, have been assigned.

“It has made a world of difference,” said the Rev. James V. Lyles, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pacoima. “The fear has almost gone from 100% to zero.”

The new program was spearheaded by Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, the top-ranking police official in the Valley, who took over his post the same day that four officers were indicted in the King beating.

Kroeker has since emerged as one of the most visible public figures in the Valley and, in November, he announced his candidacy for chief of police. He is considered a long shot but has helped restore confidence in the department.

Even as the Police Department’s problems unfolded on television and in newspapers, crime increased dramatically. Once regarded as a refuge from urban crime, in 1991 the Valley seemed to belie that image.

Robberies in the Valley increased far more rapidly than in other parts of the city, reaching 6,638 by mid-December--up 40% from the previous year. Homicides also hit a record high: 142 as of Dec. 10, compared to 124 for all of 1990.

Hidden in that statistic were shocking multiple killings: the November slaying of a family of four in Granada Hills; the stabbing and shooting deaths of five North Hollywood catering-truck employees this month, and the June killing of two longtime teen-age friends at a sandwich shop in Northridge.

Even the Valley’s upscale areas were not immune from crime, and some residents responded by banding together into Neighborhood Watch groups and volunteer foot patrols.

“My first reaction was to move, but then I thought, ‘I’m going to fight before I get pushed out,’ ” said Becky Lohnes Leveque, organizer of Operation PROTECT, or Porter Ranch Organized to Eliminate Crime Together.

Leveque and her crime-weary neighbors mobilized their forces in October, and by November had reduced residential burglaries by 87%.

Elsewhere, homeowner and neighborhood groups in the Valley fought, with mixed results, a new plan to allow increased growth in Warner Center, a city proposal to rezone certain areas to allow greater density and create more affordable housing, and the final details of a city agreement with Porter Ranch developer Nathan Shapell.

The Porter Ranch development agreement, approved earlier this month, exempts Shapell’s 1,300-acre housing and commercial project, one of the largest in city history, from most future growth-control laws for 20 years. In return, Shapell, who first proposed the development in the late 1980s, agreed to pay $2.5 million toward two major traffic improvement projects in the northwest Valley and other public works improvements.

Also the result of several years of hearings and community meetings was a plan for controlling growth along Ventura Boulevard, approved by the City Council in January after a five-year campaign to scale back development on the thoroughfare. The sweeping plan, which limits commercial projects along a 17-mile stretch of the boulevard and imposes millions of dollars in fees on developers to cope with new traffic, delighted homeowners.

But real estate experts called the plan superfluous, pointing out that the failing economy had already effectively stunted growth.

Other examples of the slowdown in development abounded. A proposed new civic center in Van Nuys, key to the revitalization of Van Nuys Boulevard, was put on hold in January when no developer came forward as an investor for the area of government buildings, adult bookstores, pawnshops and auto dealers.

“It’s not seen as a terribly attractive street,” said David Rodriguez, vice president of a Burbank consulting firm.

There were exceptions to the slowdown. Earlier this month, a proposed 22-story North Hollywood office tower that would be one of the tallest buildings in the Valley won a major approval from the city. In August, officials also gave a green light to the construction of twin 13-story towers and a 10-story office building at Gateway Plaza, at Ventura and Topanga Canyon boulevards in Woodland Hills. The latter project was proposed in 1982.

The recently slowed growth of the area nonetheless haunted local politicians, who this year were held accountable for their opposition to, or support of, development proposals from years past.

In documents released in October, veteran Councilwoman Joy Picus showed herself to be a feisty, at times vengeful, politician in her bid to halt commercial development on the Woodland Hills property known as Warner Ridge. In her deposition in a $100-million lawsuit filed this year by Warner Ridge Associates, Picus shocked many inside and outside city government when she described the “extreme degree of pleasure” she experienced in outmaneuvering Mayor Tom Bradley and shaming former Councilman Robert Farrell.

She justified her hardball tactics by saying she was only obeying the will of her constituents.

It was a political lesson a chagrined Bernson later acknowledged that he should have heeded.

In February, the longtime councilman dismissed notions that his vociferous support of the Porter Ranch project presented him with a reelection liability. “It’s no secret that Porter Ranch is something that people are concerned about, but we don’t believe we’re vulnerable on it,” he said.

But two months later, Bernson found himself caught up in a rancorous runoff election with school board member Julie Korenstein, who hammered at his support for the massive development. In June, he kept his office by a mere 746 votes.

Former state Sen. Alan Robbins was not as fortunate as Bernson. In a major fall from grace, Robbins stepped down from office near the end of this year and confessed to misusing his position for personal financial gain. The target of a federal investigation, the 48-year-old Van Nuys Democrat pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering and income tax evasion.

His resignation triggered a flurry of speculation over a possible successor. East Valley school board member Roberta Weintraub immediately threw her hat into the ring, announcing her intention to run on the same day that Robbins yielded his seat.

While Weintraub and Korenstein had their eyes on other elected offices, Valley residents watched closely as the schools underwent major changes.

Campus violence escalated, and by August, every school in the district had switched to a year-round schedule, over the protests of many parents.

Since the beginning of the year, the cash-starved Los Angeles Unified School District has lost teachers through layoffs and an early-retirement program designed to encourage the departure of the district’s highest-paid teachers. In the Valley, which boasts a large proportion of veteran instructors, dozens of teachers opted for early retirement and left classrooms at the end of November, right before the Thanksgiving holidays.

One Valley school, Van Nuys Junior High, found itself in a curious predicament just three days after school began in August: Suddenly, it no longer resided in its namesake community--one paradox of many that resulted from a rash of community name changes.

Touched off five years ago by the creation of West Hills by a group of dissident Canoga Park residents, this year’s round of name changes represented attempts by neighborhoods of Van Nuys and Sepulveda to dissociate themselves from those communities.

In May, North Hills was carved from the part of Sepulveda west of the San Diego Freeway, even though the new community was neither in the north part of the Valley nor rolling with hills.

But six months later, at the direction of Councilman Joel Wachs, the rest of Sepulveda also changed its name to North Hills, thus defeating the first effort to sever ties with a community that had become known for prostitution and drug dealing.

Attempting to explain the name-change frenzy, one real estate agent commented: “It’s the ego thing. Everybody wants to have more, drive a better car, live in a better neighborhood. Seeing as how they can’t move their houses to a better neighborhood, they change the name to make themselves feel better.”

All very human concerns, sociologists say, especially as new U. S. census data shows the Valley to have undergone significant change in the past decade. The 1990 census figures, released in the spring, found that Anglos, who once made up three-quarters of the Valley population, are now slightly more than half of its population.

The census data did hold some surprises. Flouting conventional wisdom, the less affluent communities of Arleta and Pacoima showed a combined homeownership rate virtually equal to that of Encino and Tarzana. Poorer areas also had a higher concentration of young children and elderly residents.

Unmarried women in southern Van Nuys and northern Sherman Oaks received heartening news after the census revealed that never-married males over the age of 15 outnumber them by 22,874 to 16,543.

In the end, 1991 was a year when the past came home to roost, when suspicions were confirmed and past actions examined, revealed or judged. The future is already in the making.