RESEDA : Community Organization’s Revival Pushed

Paula Elefante has been watching the changes in Reseda for a long time. A 36-year resident, she’s seen pawnshops and empty storefronts crop up to replace drugstores, women’s dress shops and the neighborhood movie house.

Now, the former bank employee and longtime police officer’s wife is reviving a dormant community association that she hopes will bring renewal to Reseda and help neighbors there get to know each other.

“I believe people want change,” Elefante said. “If more people got involved in a community association, we together could start effecting changes. Sadly, too many of us were too busy before. We didn’t get to know our neighbors.”

Elefante is building her new organization on the skeleton of the old Reseda Community Assn., which began in the late 1970s but has not been active for several years. Despite its dormancy, the organization has maintained its status as a nonprofit corporation, and some members of its board of directors still live in the area, Elefante said.

The new group will adopt the name and incorporated status of the old.

Elefante said she hopes that the group will represent Reseda’s considerable ethnic and economic diversity and reverse the trends that have caused it to be perceived as one of the less desirable ZIP codes in the west San Fernando Valley--evidenced by the secession of some border areas to Tarzana and Encino in recent years.

She has enlisted the help of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Reseda Chamber of Commerce in drumming up support for the idea. But she said the community association will be distinct from both the chamber and local Neighborhood Watch groups.

The group may attempt to replicate community reclamation projects carried out elsewhere in the city, such as starting youth programs, posting flyers declaring Reseda a “drug-free area” and simply encouraging people to report crimes rather than “closing their doors and shutting the blinds,” she said.

An open organizational meeting for the revived Reseda Community Assn. has been scheduled for Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. at Reseda Park. She said she hopes for a large turnout of homeowners, merchants, tenants and commercial property owners to discuss such issues as land use, youth crime, schools and community revitalization.