N. UNIVERSITY PARK : Local Pride, World Class at The Inn

When tourists or business travelers come to Los Angeles they usually stay in a hotel or motel, but Patsy Carter wants them to know that there is room for them at The Inn.

“People who stay here leave with a far different view of Los Angeles,” said Carter, proprietor of The Inn at 657 W. 23rd St., a converted apartment house built in the 1940s in West Los Angeles. Carter relocated the building in 1982 and converted it to an inn nine years later.

The furnishings and decorations of the five suites--including a mahogany-frame bed, a Turkish rug and hand-painted Japanese silks--the fern garden and Jacuzzi, and the breakfasts of fresh fruit, pancakes and local eggs and vegetables all make The Inn a pleasant place to stay.

But what makes it more than that for some is the chance to meet guests from around the world and an innkeeper who cares about her neighborhood.

“I don’t have to travel; the world comes here to me,” Carter, 55, said as she reminisced about guests from as far away as South Africa and Australia and about breakfast table discussions about the butterflies of Madagascar, trips up the Amazon, Midwest politics or jazz.

When she’s not cooking or gardening, Carter, a retired trial lawyer, can be found painting out graffiti, writing and calling police and city officials, or trying to get absentee property owners to repair their buildings, all in an effort to keep her neighborhood from being “brushed off.”

“This neighborhood is full of hard-working people trying to get ahead and take care of their children,” Carter said. People who “look down on this area don’t have a clue about what a warm and comfortable place it is.”

Gary Sherwin, director of media relations for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, said The Inn is “a unique contribution to the hotel mix in the Downtown area.

“It gives people a different perspective to staying in the South-Central area,” Sherwin said.

When Laurie MacGillivray, an assistant professor of education at USC, first came to Los Angeles for a job interview she stayed at a nearby hotel. “When I looked out the window I saw barbed wire and I thought: ‘How can I live here?’ ” MacGillivray said. But on her second visit she stayed at The Inn and “got a whole different feel for living here,” she said.

Talking with Carter and having a chance to explore the neighborhood, MacGillivray said she began to see problems such as graffiti and urban decay as “things you want to take an active role in changing rather than things that seem overwhelming.”

Carter, who grew up in Whittier, spoke passionately about the need for equitable attention and resources for poor and affluent neighborhoods.

Museums, libraries, schools and colleges, plus some of the city’s most important architectural treasures, are all within walking distance of The Inn. But some absentee property owners and government agencies tend to neglect the neighborhood or offer less than stellar service, Carter said.

Conditions that wouldn’t be tolerated in affluent neighborhoods are allowed to exist in others, she said. “If you wouldn’t do it in your neighborhood, don’t do it here,” she tells landlords and city officials.

Carter is as protective of her guests as she is of her neighborhood.

“I’ve had couples from other parts of town come for romantic getaways and business people who want a quiet place for a breakfast meeting,” she said.

Information: (213) 741-2200.