Affordable Housing Plan Takes Its Lumps : Urban renewal: Residents praise restoration of vintage coffee shop, which has landmark status. But they dislike idea of putting 35 units on the site.

One day while driving by the Wichstand coffee shop on a blighted corner in Windsor Hills, Shirley V. Quarmyne came up with what she thought was an ideal project.

Her plan was to restore the boarded up restaurant and build 35 units of affordable housing on the one-acre site, at Slauson Avenue and Overhill Drive.

“We believed it would be a very viable project,” said Quarmyne, the director of Queue-Up, a nonprofit affordable housing group based in West Hollywood. “We anticipated there would be some problems from the community, but we never thought we would get the reaction we received.”

But reaction there was. Although there was no objection to the idea of restoring the 1950s “Googie”-style eatery, which received county historic landmark status in 1989, the plan to put low-cost housing on the same site touched off a firestorm of protest in the largely middle- and upper-middle-class, African-American communities of Windsor Hills and View Park.

Queue-Up wanted permission to build 13 apartments for families and 22 smaller apartments for senior citizens on the property, which is zoned commercial. There were plans for underground parking, a child day-care center and 24-hour security. The Wichstand was also to be restored as a family restaurant.

The Regional Planning Commission considered the plan at a hearing last week. A team of housing advocates, preservationists and representatives from the Legal Aid Foundation spoke in favor of the plan. But more than 150 residents, representing numerous neighborhood groups, spoke against it.

Proponents of the project argued about the need for affordable housing countywide while nearby residents talked about the impact of low-income housing on crime and property values.

“This is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde project,” said J. Paul Robinson, commission chairman. “It has a dual personality.” Commissioners suggested that the two sides try to work out a compromise, but neither side would budge. Residents insist that they will only support a commercial development.

After nearly three hours of debate, the permit was voted down with four commissioners voting against the project and one abstaining. Queue-Up plans to appeal the decision to the Board of Supervisors, Quarmyne said.

Residents raised concerns about the project, saying it would drag down property values and increase traffic. They also contended that the area was not suitable for housing senior citizens because there are no food markets and few drug stores nearby. They argued that the one-acre site was too small to accommodate 35 units and a restaurant. And they said the community already has more than its share of affordable housing.

But their major concern was crime.

“We are fighting to keep our property values up,” said Edward L. Brantley, who lives near the site. “This project would bring in people who are not taxpayers and who have no roots in the community.”

Quarmyne accused the residents of being elitist. “Contrary to popular belief, people who need affordable housing are hard-working, decent, law-abiding people,” she said. “They cross ethnic lines, educational lines and family background lines.”

She reminded residents that when blacks moved into Baldwin Hills, View Park and Windsor Hills years ago “the myth was that the neighborhood would deteriorate.”

“The neighborhood was not destroyed then and will not be destroyed by tenants in the Slauson-Overhill apartments,” she said. “. . . Economic discrimination is just as odious as racial discrimination.”

But Tony Nicholas, president of the United Homeowners Assn., an umbrella group of block clubs in the View Park and Windsor Hills areas, said their fears were valid.

“It is a sign of the times,” he said. “People are fearful and they don’t want to attract outsiders into the neighborhood. We have the cream of the crop up here, educators, doctors, businessmen. They have invested a lot of money in their homes.”

Nicholas contended that race is the factor that frequently puts the Baldwin Hills community in the position of having to fight proposals to put low-income housing nearby.

“If this were a white neighborhood, it would not happen,” he said. “They are not talking about putting this in Beverly Hills or Westchester.”