VAN NUYS : Merchants Wanted for Business Watch

As an eye doctor, Dr. Barry Leonard has seen it plenty of times before: people complaining about a problem, but then finding some excuse to duck their meeting with him. To Leonard, it’s part of the business.

But as president of the Van Nuys Boulevard Business Watch, Leonard is tired of excuses for missing his group’s meetings, which need more merchants to identify and eradicate blight, crime and eyesores along the thoroughfare.

“We’re knocking on doors trying to get people,” said Leonard, who will hold his next meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the seventh-floor classroom of Valley Hospital Medical Center, 14500 Sherman Circle, Van Nuys. “People have got to get out there and yell and complain.”

Of the hundreds of businesses along Sepulveda Boulevard, Leonard said there are about 20 that have become core members of his business watch since its founding in June.

But that small group has accomplished much, Leonard said. Several have improved their security, and the group has altered pay phones along the boulevard so that they do not accept callbacks, foiling beeper-equipped drug dealers and prostitutes.

Leonard said his monthly business watch meetings also offer a chance to discuss neighborhood crime problems with senior officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys station. Wednesday’s meeting will be such an opportunity.

At least one of the officers will be bilingual because many of the merchants along Van Nuys are Spanish-speaking, Leonard said. Leonard is also searching for a Korean translator.

To him, it is a matter of pooling as many people as possible to make the boulevard a better place to work and shop. “It’s in the best interest of the businesses to keep clients coming in their area by promoting the safety of anybody in the vicinity.”