RESEDA : Quake Dealt Blow to Revitalization Efforts

Plywood on windows is not an unfamiliar sight in Reseda. Long before the ground started shaking Jan. 17, some property owners were favoring wood to cover up not earthquake damage but simple neglect.

Now, the same activists who used to complain that plywood was blight find themselves surrounded by it.

“There is a lot of broken glass and a lot of frightened people,” said Rayna Gabin, field deputy for City Councilwoman Laura Chick.

In Reseda, the earthquake has dealt a formidable blow to efforts to revitalize Reseda’s declining shopping area.

“We were desperately trying to get ourselves back on track as being a safe place to shop,” lamented Steve Aufhauser, part owner of Continental Art Supply on Reseda Boulevard. “Now, when people drive by and see (boarded-up windows) are they really going to say this is a safe place?”

According to the city officials, 142 of the 1,143 buildings inspected so far in the West Valley City Council District that includes Reseda have been determined to be unsafe.

Especially hard hit were apartment complexes. More than a third of the dwelling units inspected so far in the same area have been deemed unsafe, and several blocks of Sherman Way and Reseda Boulevard are lined with the building department’s ominous red and yellow tags.

Still, some of Reseda’s old-timers see a silver lining. Gabin said she hopes that the quake will bring a needed revamping of older, decrepit storefronts.

Business owners, who met in an informational session Tuesday night, talked of using federal disaster relief money to rebuild Reseda into a quainter, more upscale version of itself.

“They want to try to create a theme, like maybe Old Pasadena,” said Gabin, displaying the heady optimism of Reseda’s most enthusiastic boosters.

The earthquake, said Aufhauser, will succeed where relentless community pressure has failed: Those who have refused to properly maintain their buildings must now repair them or tear them down. The result will be the weeding out of the most unsightly of his neighbors, he said.

Ann Kinzle, executive director of the Reseda Chamber of Commerce, said she also sees hope in a change of attitude in Reseda since the earthquake. In the past, revitalization efforts have been plagued by apathy.

But the road toward a more high-rent Reseda is likely to be a long one. Across the street from the flower shop and upholstery shop, pawnshops and check-cashing stores--businesses frowned upon by many of Reseda’s older business people--have pluckily reopened, their hand-painted signs belying broken glass and shattered plaster.

Still, the earthquake seems to have united Reseda’s ethnically diverse business community and inspired them to pursue common goals, she said.

“We are pulling together and really getting to know each other,” she said.