South Pasadena’s Freeway Fears Renewed : Transit: Residents react after state proposes to complete the 710 roadway. Mayor says ‘it’s certainly not the end of the fight.’

In the heart of the western San Gabriel Valley’s freeway battle zone, two visitors from Brentwood walked up the driveway of Wynyate Estate, passing the plaque at the wrought-iron gate that declares: South Pasadena Cultural Landmark.

Cameras in hand, Ed and Margarat Tavetian had come Saturday to see what they called a tragedy in the making--the state’s plans to move forward with an eight-lane, $630-million freeway through the small town.

The 1887 structure, the home of the city’s first mayor, will be spared. But the roadway would cut across the front yard and, next door, the house built for the first mayor’s mother-in-law sits in its path.

“It would destroy South Pasadena just because somebody . . . wants to cut three minutes off their trip” from Pasadena to Anaheim, said Ian White-Thomson, a 55-year-old business executive and owner of Wynyate, a blue Victorian home.

In South Pasadena coffee shops and realty offices and on street corners, the talk on Saturday centered on Friday’s announcement that state Department of Transportation officials will ask the Federal Highway Administration for immediate approval of the Long Beach Freeway extension. For more than 30 years the project has been delayed by controversy that recently has attracted attention from national environmental and preservation groups.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s Administration said it is taking “all necessary steps” to push the 6.2-mile roadway. It is considered the last significant gap in Los Angeles County’s freeway system, stretching from the San Bernardino Freeway in Los Angeles to the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

Blocked from moving on the project since 1973 by a federal court injunction that required environmental studies, Caltrans officials have prepared a revised report. The new study, they said, has the full backing of the Federal Highway Administration. The officials hope a federal judge will soon lift the order that has thwarted their plans.

Critics say the proposal would directly affect more than 1,400 houses from the working-class neighborhoods of El Sereno in Los Angeles north to the upscale enclaves of South Pasadena and Pasadena.

The proposed route of Interstate 710 also would affect dozens of historic houses, including Craftsman and Mediterranean revival-style houses and ones designed by internationally famous architects Rudolf Schindler and Charles and Henry Greene. About 7,000 trees could be uprooted.

Caltrans officials have given assurances that they will move the most architecturally significant houses. But this does little to assuage the anger of opponents.

“There are very few communities in Los Angeles County that have a small-town feel the way South Pasadena does. If this freeway goes through, that will be destroyed,” said Eric Steen, 35, who lives next to Wynyate with his wife and two young daughters, both fourth-generation South Pasadena residents.

Known for its good schools, low crime rate and proximity to downtown Los Angeles, South Pasadena, population 24,000, considers itself a jewel of a hometown, one with a Midwestern feeling.

Over the years, the freeway issue has become a political litmus test for candidacy on the City Council. The council’s official position opposes “all of the freeway alternatives that have been proposed” and advocates mass transit and traffic light synchronization to ease congestion.

In its fight, the city has hired lobbyists, “freeway attorneys” and public relations firms. In 1989, owing to the threat of the proposed freeway, the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared South Pasadena as one of America’s 11 “endangered places.”

Mayor Dick Richards, holding forth Saturday behind the counter at the candy and collectibles store he runs with his wife in a 1904 building, was trying to console constituents who stopped by or called.

“Did the freeway go through?” asked a woman with a worried look on her face.

The 69-year-old retired FBI agent, who spent decades investigating mobsters in Los Angeles, tried to reassure her. He explained how federal transit officials still have to approve the environmental documents, and so on. The proposed route, the so-called Meridian Variation, skirts the city’s business district just a few blocks from Richards’ store.

“I don’t think it’s a panic situation,” he said. Caltrans officials say they hope to start construction by 2000. “It is a disappointment,” he said, “but it’s certainly not the end of the fight.”

But Helme Strater, 78, whose Mediterranean revival house is in the proposed path and is shaded by giant deodars, called Friday’s announcement “a bombshell.”

Strater’s wife, Julie, said: “Who wants to give up their home for a freeway?”

Nonetheless, Richards said one developer in town is banking on the freeway not being completed soon. Construction, he said, is well under way for a tract where 25 houses are priced at $750,000 each--right in the proposed path.