Staying Small : Neighborhoods: Talk that a Payless drug store is coming sends chills through cozy Larchmont Village. Merchants and residents have organized to keep big business out.

There is trouble brewing on Larchmont Boulevard.

Many who frequent the friendly shops and outdoor cafes along this tranquil, tree-lined street near Hancock Park describe it as an island of small-town values, a place holding its own amid an urban sea. Here, the pharmacists know your name. Here, the proprietors smile and ask after your children. Here, in what regulars call “the village,” running errands is a pleasure, not a chore.

Now, Larchmont’s carefully cultivated mom-and-pop atmosphere may be sullied, many people fear, by a corporate giant: Payless Drug Stores. As fiercely as sea gulls protecting a nest, the locals are preparing to do battle.

Shopkeepers say Payless will threaten the financial health of more than a dozen small businesses--from the pharmacies to the gift shops to the Hallmark greeting card store--that won’t be able to compete with the chain’s cheaper prices. Moreover, many residents say, a discount drug store just wouldn’t fit in.

“It just doesn’t compute with the feeling here,” said Daryl Trainor, a caterer and mother of five who has lived in the largely well-to-do neighborhood for 20 years. “This is a very special street. You always know on Larchmont that everyone is watching out for everyone else. A Payless is not that kind of store.”

“This is the last vestige of charm, grace, dignity and personal service in a radius of . . . you name it,” said Andrew J. Fenady, a television and movie producer who has owned property on Larchmont since 1969 and has raised six children in the neighborhood. “You see what happened to Fairfax, to Wilshire, to Ventura Boulevard when the cut-rate people moved in? We are prepared . . . to fight.”

Last week, after word got out that a Payless store would likely replace a health food store that recently shut its doors, a campaign was launched in protest. One resident printed up big yellow signs that are now posted in shop windows up and down the street.

“A Payless Drug Store is Bad Medicine for Larchmont,” the signs say. “If you live in Larchmont Village, Windsor Square or Hancock Park, a Larchmont Boulevard ghost town will destroy your property value.”

Neighborhood schoolchildren passed around another flyer: “Shop David. Fight Goliath. Don’t Shop Payless!”

Shopkeepers say they hope to forestall a boycott by persuading Payless executives to reconsider because they are not welcome. Residents have been encouraged to call and send faxes to the corporate headquarters in Wilsonville, Ore.

Then there’s the petition. In less than a week, Fenady said, more than 1,200 people have signed a petition opposing the Payless store. Copies are being delivered to Payless corporate headquarters and to Ronald A. Simms, the man who owns the building that Payless plans to occupy.

Simms could not be reached for comment Monday. Karen Sheridan, the vice president of corporate communications for Payless Drug Stores, did not return repeated telephone calls.

For some in this enclave, where many pride themselves on their hip sophistication, the furor over the discount drug store has sparked fear of outsiders.

“Now everybody is going to be coming to the neighborhood to go to Payless, taking up parking spaces that our customers need,” said Tamara DeJong, who does facial treatments at the Larchmont Beauty Center.

In some cases, the specter of a discount store raises issues of class and race. Joan Stumpf, co-owner of Kipling’s Flowers, said that in addition to worrying about Payless’ cheaper prices, some retailers are concerned that it will attract a less-affluent clientele.

“Some people are very adamant that they’ll all swarm in here and we’ll all be murdered in our sleep,” she said. “I’m being facetious. But it’s scary.

“I don’t like the way Fairfax and 3rd Street is over there with the Kmart and the Sav-On,” Stumpf said, referring to a commercial district nearby. “I don’t know if (that clientele) will all come over here.”

Then again, she said, “if we look like a racist neighborhood we may not get any customers around here anyway.”

Jennifer Herold, office manager in a Larchmont Boulevard environmental design firm, said she is weary of such comments. While she, too, opposes the Payless because it will compete with longtime business owners, Herold said some of her neighbors are against it for the wrong reasons.

“I’m getting very tired of people saying, ‘We don’t want the kind of element or person who would shop at Payless.’ . . . As they talk about it, everybody keeps pointing in that direction,” she said, pointing south. “What’s in that direction? South-Central and other parts of West L.A. that are less affluent. I don’t like this attitude that we’re better than everybody else.”

Edie Frere and Chris Wolfus own the Landis General Store, a crowded, comfy place that for more than 60 years has sold everything from thumbtacks to dress shields. They bristle when they see Larchmont Village described as a bastion of the wealthy.

“We’re not talking about a bunch of elitists. That’s just not what this is,” said Wolfus, who has been known to make home deliveries and to special order school supplies in a child’s favorite color. Service, she says, is what makes Larchmont special. “It has nothing to do with money.”

Her partner agreed. Frere’s objections to the Payless are not based on who the store might attract, but on what it would sell. She fears that a discount store will force stores like theirs to stop selling little things--the pen refills, the thread--and to become more upscale.

Sherwin Epstein, a pharmacist who has owned the MRX Pharmacy for 17 years, is the first to admit that he has a vested interest in keeping the Payless Drug Store out. But his feelings run deeper than the bottom line, he said.

“I went to junior high school here 40 years ago. Everybody knows everyone here,” he said. “Customers come in, they want to know how my son is doing in college. I want to know about their kids.”

“It’s a small town,” he said. “Now, everyone is afraid it’s going to become just like every other part of Los Angeles.”