City Wants Own ZIP Code as a Matter of Pride : Postal service: A survey of 17,000 homes and businesses could lead to creation of 90703 label for Cerritos by next year.

What’s in a ZIP code, anyway?

For Cerritos Mayor John F. Crawley, it is a matter of community pride.

Although the larger Cerritos surrounds Artesia on three sides, the two share a ZIP code and their mail is delivered from a post office in Artesia. Too many times, Crawley said, he finds magazines and bills in his mailbox addressed to Artesia.

Crawley has nothing against his less affluent neighbor city. He is just proud of his own town, with its $60-million performing arts center, its regional mall and its 24-dealer auto square.

Now, after years of lobbying the U.S. Postal Service, residents of Cerritos may finally get a ZIP code of their own.

By the end of the year, more than 17,000 households and businesses in Cerritos will receive a survey asking whether they want to break away from the Artesia-Cerritos 90701 ZIP code. The city will get its own 90703 ZIP code in July if a majority of the respondents approve the plan.

Postal officials also are surveying 84 Cerritos homes that share the 90623 ZIP code with neighboring La Palma to the east.

Crawley said he believes the change will help reinforce his community’s well-heeled identity and resolve longstanding complaints about mail service.

“As the mayor, I find it very annoying to be getting mail at my home that is addressed to the city of Artesia,” Crawley said. “I don’t see how giving Cerritos its own identity should hurt Artesia in any way.”

Artesia officials say they won’t mind if Cerritos gets its own ZIP code. “I don’t think anybody in Artesia cares a hoot or a holler if Cerritos gets its own ZIP code,” Mayor James A. Van Horn Jr. said. “It doesn’t bother me any.”

Artesia was established more than a century ago when Cerritos was mostly dairy farms. A post office was opened in Artesia in the 1930s.

Beyond their shared ZIP code, Artesia and Cerritos appear to have little in common.

At 8.9 square miles, Cerritos is nearly six times larger than Artesia. The giant auto square and a regional mall in Cerritos generate millions in tax revenue each year. Its performing arts center--which featured Frank Sinatra as its debut act earlier this year--is making a name for the city in theater and musical circles, officials say.

Artesia, on the other hand, is perhaps best known today for the sari boutiques and incense-filled restaurants that make up Little India on Pioneer Boulevard.

There is also a big gap in incomes and home prices. On the average, Cerritos residents earn $59,076 a year, $22,693 more than Artesians, according to the 1990 Census. The average value of Cerritos homes--$300,000--is nearly $100,000 higher than homes in Artesia.

“It has a great image,” Diana Needham, a former Cerritos city councilwoman, said of her city. “Because of what Cerritos is, a lot of people have chosen to move here or stay here. There are a lot of people with city pride.”

Cerritos officials insist there is a practical side to the ZIP code story. Postal customers in the city have complained for years about their mail being delayed or returned because of the confusion over where they live, Crawley said.

But there also are down sides to the proposed changes. Fifty-six carrier routes will need to be altered out of the Artesia Post Office to serve Cerritos alone, which also could cause delays in delivering some mail, said Larry Rubin of the Postal Service’s district office in Long Beach.

Businesses and organizations also will have to change stationery to show the new ZIP code. The change will cost the city of Cerritos about $2,000, said Dennis T. Davis, assistant city manager. He admits that is peanuts for a city with a $48.2-million budget, fake rock waterfalls in the center of town and street medians that are manicured year-round.

Cerritos leaders have been striving to get their own ZIP code since 1986, when a branch of the Artesia Post Office opened on Carmenita Road near 183rd Street in Cerritos. Members of the City Council have pleaded their case with Postal Service officials in Washington. Postal officials resisted the city’s request, citing costs and time required to make the change. They agreed to survey the community after Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) threatened to introduce legislation to allow Cerritos to get its own ZIP code, Crawley said.

Cerritos is not the only city in search of a ZIP code. Signal Hill, a tiny enclave surrounded by Long Beach, also hopes to get one of its own by next year. The city shares three ZIP codes--90804, 90806 and 90807--with Long Beach, and each one is based in a separate Long Beach post office. Signal Hill officials are scouting potential sites to build a post office branch, and residents and businesses will likely be surveyed early next year about the proposed change, City Manager Douglas N. La Belle said.

Although the Postal Service entertains such requests, it does not encourage changes. The five-digit ZIP codes are assigned to make mail sorting and delivery more efficient, not as community markers, Rubin said.

“ZIP codes are used for internal purposes,” Rubin said. “But if we can accommodate (Cerritos and Signal Hill), we will.”