HIGHLAND PARK : Residents Question Blue Line Plans

Residents whose homes are threatened by the proposed Blue Line construction through Highland Park and Lincoln Heights plan to send a letter to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board this week asking it to reopen the approval process, claiming the plans were made without sufficient community input.

Members of the Highland Park Neighborhood Assn., the Lincoln Heights Preservation Assn. and neighborhood groups from Glassell Park, Cypress Park and Elysian Valley have been meeting the last two months to try to find out more about the MTA’s plans for the route.

The Pasadena extension of the Blue Line, a project estimated to cost $900 million, will follow the old Santa Fe Railroad line out of Downtown.

Residents, many of whom will have to move or sell off portions of their property to make way for construction, say they were not given enough notice about the approval process and did not know they would be affected.

The MTA has conducted public hearings and completed environmental impact reports on the project since 1990, with outreach in Korean, Chinese and Spanish, said Enrique Valenzuela, MTA construction spokesman.

Valenzuela and two other MTA employees went door-to-door through the neighborhoods in the Marmion Corridor before those hearings were conducted to alert residents to the proposal to build the 13.6-mile extension from Union Station, through Chinatown, Mount Washington, Highland Park and South Pasadena.

“Our information to them was basically to let them know this was coming down the pipe,” Valenzuela said. “We gave them information on who to talk to and a number to call when they didn’t understand a paper they received.”

Construction has begun on a bridge over the Los Angeles River near Elysian Park, but Valenzuela did not know when the affected properties will be bought out. The MTA estimates the entire construction project, including 14 stations along the way, will be complete by 1997.

An estimated 170 properties, including homes and businesses along the route, will be partially or fully acquired.

The residents say the project will reduce the affordable housing stock in the area, and they also question the safety of the route because several elementary schools are nearby.

About 60 people attended a community meeting in November.

“Most feel that the most that’s wrong is they were not informed,” said resident Don Newton, whose property in Glassell Park will not be affected. “There was no translation into Chinese, Korean, Tagalog or Vietnamese, and the Spanish was spotty.”

Newton said many who attended the November meeting said they believed the Blue Line, a high-speed train, would travel at the same low speeds as the old Santa Fe Railroad.

“The people in the community are feeling that MTA’s pulling a fast one on them,” he said.

The residents plan to hold another community meeting next month in their effort to get the MTA to reopen the public hearings.