VAN NUYS : Coalition Wants to Beautify Median

If a group of Van Nuys residents and merchants have their way, Sandy Mcleod won’t have to deal with dirty diapers anymore.

Every morning, the 35-year-old apartment manager gets up and removes diapers, fast-food containers and other trash dumped along a two-block-long center median that splits the 7000 block of Sepulveda Boulevard. But now, a local coalition of citizens and merchants is asking the city for permission to discourage such littering by beautifying the barren dirt median with plants.

“It’s pretty messy,” Mcleod said. “When people notice that it’s not really looking good, they just throw their trash on it. I think if it looks better maintained, I think people will respect it more.”

The coalition includes the Sepulveda Business Watch, the owners of the separate North Towers and South Towers apartments and the Center For Independent Living of Southern California. The proposal offers to use disabled workers from the center to landscape the median and install $1,300 worth of irrigation lines, paid for by the apartment owners.

If approved by the city of Los Angeles Board of Public Works, the proposal would become only the second of its kind in the Valley, said Paul Racs, coordinator of the city’s Adopt-A-Median program. The other median project is located on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, he said.

Coordinators of the Sepulveda Boulevard project hope that the city will respond favorably to their proposal by the first week of October, when they would like to start the project. Then, if it is successful, they hope to inspire even more such projects.

“I think what we would do is use this as a model or a pilot for other people to follow suit,” said Nettie Coleman, supervisor of services at the Center For Independent Living.