‘Business Friendly’ Cure Worse Than Disease : Granting liquor licenses to spur the local economy worsens crime, lowers the quality of life in our communities and gives residents another reason to leave Los Angeles.

A deplorable aspect of the “business friendly” attitude in City Hall may actually be contributing to the migration of residents from Los Angeles.

With the economic upturn in Los Angeles lagging far behind other major U.S. cities, policy makers at the state and city levels are desperately attempting to spur the local economy. Unfortunately, they are doing it by sacrificing various environmental protections and limiting public participation.

Developers demand due process in the courts when attempting to make a case against decisions that hamper their projects. Homeowners deserve due process, too. If they want to protect their neighborhoods from a development that will cause problems, they deserve the same consideration from City Council that the developer gets. But they are seldom afforded even a reasonable amount of time at council meetings to make their case.

Homeowner organizations are an important safeguard in protecting the integrity of residential neighborhoods. When they are purposely eliminated from the planning process, that safeguard is compromised. My own organization, the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., was recently frozen out of the final stages of negotiations over the layout of a supermarket and other stores at Hayvenhurst Avenue and Sherman Way.

There is no question that the economy needs a shot in the arm and that some businesses have relocated to greener pastures in other states. But that should not mean favoring businesses such as liquor stores and convenience markets offering liquor in high-crime areas and locating pawn shops adjacent to residential neighborhoods.

Mayor Richard Riordan’s campaign promise to make Los Angeles streets safer by adding 3,000 officers to the police force and developing a “business friendly” attitude at City Hall has the potential to improve everyone’s life in this city. But 3,000 more policemen would not be enough enforcement to offset the increased street crime brought by additional alcohol licenses in high-crime areas.

The prime examples are in South-Central Los Angeles and the Westlake Pico-Union district of the inner city. There the state had the opportunity to limit liquor sales in areas of high crime and a heavy over-concentration of alcohol outlets. But instead of recognizing the problem, the state sought only to increase revenue by issuing one liquor license after another, knowing the social problems that these additional liquor outlets caused.

This is also happening in the San Fernando Valley. Based on crime statistics and the number of existing outlets, parts of North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Pacoima and Canoga Park should not get new liquor stores--but they do.

The city of Los Angeles has an established conditional-use permit process, which has coordinated local control over new alcohol license requests with local land-use policy. For the most part, this process has been effective.

However, recent decisions reflect a new, less-restrictive attitude. The Board of Zoning Appeals has overturned six out of 10 zoning administrator’s decisions in the past few months in which the zoning administrator made the appropriate finding and denied a liquor license request.

For instance, I will shortly be testifying before a City Council committee to protest the zoning board’s overturning of a license denial to a market on Sherman Way in North Hollywood. Owners of the market on Bel Air Avenue want to sell beer and wine even though this census tract has ample supplies: eight off-site liquor licenses, two more than the number recommended by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Department. In addition, the property is in police crime reporting district No. 1511, which shows 829 crimes, 58% more than the city’s “high crime” threshold, 524.

Time and again I have heard zoning board members explain the questionable granting of unneeded liquor licenses with the rationale that Los Angeles needs to encourage small business.

The give-them-what-they-want attitude must not prevail. The more liquor outlets that there are in a neighborhood, the more crime a neighborhood must suffer. It’s as simple as that, and the government knows it. It’s why the ABC guidelines include crime data as well as population.

A healthy economy and adequate law enforcement are on the horizon for Los Angeles, but neither is present today. Sacrificing public safety for the wrong types of new businesses will send the wrong message to those of us waiting patiently for Los Angeles to recover.