Residents Continue Fight Over 5 Motels : Zoning: Neighbors and merchants complain that prostitutes frequent the area. Police urge owners to check identifications before renting rooms.

Van Nuys residents again denounced five Sepulveda Boulevard motels as magnets for vice and crime at a zoning hearing Friday held to consider ways to clean up the area.

A decision will be announced within three weeks, according to Daniel Green, associate zoning administrator who conducted the hearing.

Many residents asked that the motels--Cinema, El Cortez, Chateau, Town House and Bali Hi--be closed, contending that restricting operations would not work.

But Los Angeles Police Sgt. Joe Mariani said the Police Department does not advocate closure of the motels or limitations on operating hours. Mariani called on owners to check patrons’ identification.

Both residents and business owners from the nearby Palms Plaza told similar tales of finding syringes and condoms on sidewalks near their homes and in alleyways. They said they have voiced the same concerns for years.

Many female residents said they were regularly propositioned by customers mistaking them for prostitutes.

Jeff Worthe, property manager for Palms Plaza, said he spent more than $25,000 in security to keep prostitutes off his property.

“I walk the girls off and I watch where they go--right up to the El Cortez Motel,” Worthe said.

Owners of both the Cinema and El Cortez motels denied that they catered to prostitutes.

Richard Cohen, Cinema owner, said he had taken the telephones out of his motel rooms and that “not having phones keeps out prostitutes and drug dealers.”

An attorney for the owners of El Cortez said her clients regularly chased prostitutes away and would rather leave the motel vacant than rent to prostitutes.

Other suggestions included removing the public telephones in front of the motels and putting them in the motel lobbies instead, and moving a nearby bus stop where prostitutes congregate.

If conditions are imposed on motel owners, they will be given time to comply. If they fail to comply, they could face closure, Green said. “The review period could be three months or three weeks based on some reasonable expectation of how long it takes to comply,” Green said.

“If we wait too long, people may feel we’re doing nothing. If it’s too short, (business) people may feel it’s not an adequate probationary period.”