Groups Offer Ideas for Eastside Revitalization : Study: Councilman Alatorre calls the report a success and backs proposal for a redevelopment study of Boyle Heights and an El Sereno industrial corridor.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre on Monday presented a list of community recommendations made by the groups involved in Adelante Eastside, a 16-month study to revitalize a 6,368-acre area on the city’s Eastside.

The study found that East Los Angeles neighborhoods of Boyle Heights and El Sereno have some of the oldest housing tracts in the city, suffer from overcrowding and lack sufficient open land for new housing or business development.

At a news conference Monday, Alatorre called the study a success. He said he will present a motion before the City Council on Wednesday to implement one of the groups’ 11 recommendations--a redevelopment study for Boyle Heights and El Sereno’s Valley Boulevard industrial corridor.

“Of the 11 recommendations presented to me, it’s the one I most favor,” Alatorre said.

The recommendations also included the rehabilitation of buildings for housing, industrial and commercial use; the development of a community shopping center and the creation of a housing project for senior citizens.

The analysis, also known as the Eastside Neighborhoods Revitalization Study, was begun last March. It was completed by Barrio Planners Inc., the Community Redevelopment Agency and a 36-member citizen committee organized by Alatorre.

Both the Community Redevelopment Agency’s board of commissioners and the City Council’s Community Housing and Redevelopment committee reviewed the report and gave it their support in the last few weeks, said Michael De La Torre, Alatorre’s chief of staff.

Alatorre applauded the study’s findings and emphasized that for the area to be revitalized, housing conditions must improve along with business opportunities.

“The units that we’re talking about have to be family units where the families have the ability to live and not be put in square boxes,” Alatorre said.

A summary of the study’s land-use inventory showed that in Boyle Heights, of the 43% of the single-family residences, 80% were in need of maintenance.

Although the study of the buildings was a “windshield survey”--an evaluation of the structures from the outside--Raul Escobedo, a consultant with Barrio Planners Inc., said the decay of many of the structures was obvious.

“Clearly, over three-quarters of the homes needed some kind of work, whether it was a new roof or repairing siding or foundation work,” Escobedo said. “A lot of these houses were built in the 1920s, and that makes these houses almost 70 years old now.”

The study also pointed out that despite many small retail businesses--mostly grocery stores, restaurants and bakeries--the area had no regional shopping center.

“There’s really not a lot of vacant land in the area,” Escobedo said.

The study’s organizers hope to build a shopping center on a piece of county property west of the new Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center building.

Alatorre said he is optimistic that if the study’s recommendations are implemented, the neighborhoods will bounce back economically and socially. A comparison to other areas of the city proves that the Eastside has potential, Alatorre said.

“Boyle Heights and El Sereno don’t have the kind of crime rates that people think they have,” Alatorre said.

Revitalization Effort Among the 11 recommendations from the Eastside Revitalization Study: 1. Begin a redevelopment feasibility study for Boyle Heights and the Valley Boulevard industrial corridor. 2. Have Community Redevelopment Agency and neighborhood representatives work to create a shopping center on county property north of Marengo Street.