Battling Upstream in Frogtown

About 20 years ago, the big excitement around Birkdale Street in Frogtown was pickup games of soccer that Dolores Lopez’s husband organized for neighborhood kids on a nearby empty lot. There were also the forays down to the Los Angeles River for a swim or to check out the croakers.

Frogtown was an obscure three-mile-long sliver of Los Angeles, located northwest of Downtown and wedged between the river and Elysian Park, where Dodger Stadium is. Few people know the area by its proper name--Elysian Valley--but many have heard of Frogtown, the nickname given in honor of the amphibian invaders from the river that routinely overran neighborhood streets.

But even the frogs don’t come around these days.

That’s because there is a cleaning solvent factory on Birkdale that residents say makes their tiny corner of L.A. a living hell. In the last 10 years, the company has expanded, taking over the empty lots around it and cutting off access to the river.

Eighteen-wheel trucks clog the narrow streets, creating safety hazards. Dolores Lopez says it has even cost her a job because the traffic made her late too often. Factory employees are forced to park on nearby streets. They sometimes leave trash on residents’ lawns. Emissions from the factory stink up the air.

“Bring back the frogs,” Birkdale’s human residents say.

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Some Birkdale residents, such as Lopez and Odette Saliot, have been fighting the factory for more than 20 years. They’ve called the cops when traffic to the factory, Mission Kleensweep, backed up on the street, leaving residents to wonder when they could get out of their driveways. They called City Hall with each new intrusion in their lives.

“How did this happen?” Saliot growls, wondering how a factory is allowed to remain in a residential area.

“The company is not a good neighbor,” Lopez adds.

If this situation had occurred in a more affluent part of Los Angeles, say Beverly Hills, the politicians would have acted quickly on the residents’ complaints, Lopez and Saliot said the other night. It would not have taken years for their problems with the factory to be noticed.

But this is Frogtown, a racially mixed community of 8,000 where things happen slowly. It’s impossible to see Frogtown from the nearby Golden State Freeway because of sound walls built by the state Department of Transportation.

Motorists find Frogtown by mistake. That leads to a frequently asked question out on Riverside Drive: “How do you get out of here to Dodger Stadium?”

The 20-year fight has brought some rewards. Petition drives have turned back some expansion plans. Recently, truck deliveries that came as early as 3:30 a.m. have been pushed back to 6:30 a.m.

City and regional agencies have assured the residents that the company has complied with all laws regulating hazardous waste storage and disposal. And the company’s fumes have never violated air quality standards.

“Big deal,” Lopez sniffs, sticking to her contention that a company such as Mission Kleensweep shouldn’t be in the same neighborhood with residents.

The fight heated up last month when Mission Kleensweep asked for a conditional use permit for a parking lot for its 45 employees.

Its president, Bob Rosenbaum, sought it to address one of the residents’ concerns, that employees park on nearby streets.

But Frogtown residents wouldn’t buy it. To them, endorsing the lot would be an invitation to expand the factory. Unified in their opposition, they found themselves talking of life before Mission Kleensweep.

“Everyone here was like a big family,” Lopez says of the area when she and her husband, Mario, both natives of Guadalajara, moved in 25 years ago. “The kids used to play soccer in a lot where the plant is now. The frogs used to come up from the river.”

She says she remembers hearing the whistles of passing trains on the other side of the L.A. River. But those days are gone.

Her home on Birkdale, purchased for $17,500 in 1974, is worth about $160,000, but she figures that it has dropped $30,000 in value because of the factory. Potential buyers have been scared off by it and she admits, “We’d like to move but we can’t afford to.”

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Frogtown scored a victory when the conditional use permit was denied by the city two weeks ago. But it’s a small consolation for residents who are still upset because the factory can’t be forced to leave.

That may be too much to ask in an ever-changing L.A.

“Let’s take care of our neighborhoods,” resident Jose Moreno said as he walked along Riverside Drive. “I’m proud I live in Frogtown.”

Just then, a motorist asked him for directions to Dodger Stadium.