WESTLAKE : Gates Installed to Deter Alley Crime

It took apartment manager Dan Woodard two years to persuade the city to close the alley behind his building, but the two gates that went up in June offer slim resistance against the tide of the neighborhood’s problems.

Before the gates were installed, junk was illegally dumped behind the Westlake Avenue apartment building and drug addicts regularly lit fires, smoked crack and got into fights and shootouts, Woodard said.

Fed up with the alley encampments, Woodard and a few property owners pitched in $2,500 for the gates and $341 for the permits to install them.

The gates have reduced, but not eliminated, the problems.

“There are less people back there now, but some regulars still climb over the fence,” said Woodard, who manages an 81-unit building.

“I thought if we closed off the alley we’d have no problem getting it cleaned (by the city), but that was a primrose path,” he said. “Now I just tell the city to furnish us the trucks and we’ll do it.”

Woodard and four of his tenants spent a recent morning loading garbage, a mattress, discarded shoes, boxes, plastic bottles, some pajamas and other debris from the alley, pungent with the smell of urine, into a borrowed city truck.

The City Council recently approved a pilot program allowing residents to close several alleys if they pay for the gates and clean the alleys themselves. If successful, the program will be expanded beyond its South-Central test area.

With the aid of a few tenants, Woodard, a no-nonsense former merchant marine, has tried to make his building a haven.

Despite being stabbed four times, Woodard has faced down gang members, evicted unruly tenants who broke his no-drugs policy and pressured the city to eliminate on-street parking on his block to rid it of about 40 drug dealers who had been doing business there.

“Apathy is the biggest thing you have to fight here, but if you know that, then you’ve got to just do it yourself,” he said. “You can’t just turn it over to dealers and drugs.”

In a neighborhood where many of the buildings have high vacancy rates, Woodard manages to keep his nearly full. He has a soft spot for people who have hit the skids and are trying to pull themselves together. He has been there himself, he said.

Says an inspirational message hanging in his office: “Sobriety will not open the gates of heaven and let you in, but it will open the gates of hell and let you out.”