LAKE VIEW TERRACE : Neighbors Say Housing Project in Wrong Area
Councilman Richard Alarcon and members of a private/public housing partnership envision a planned development on Foothill Boulevard as an endeavor combining affordable housing with state-of-the-art communications services provided through a public library to be built next door.
But some area homeowners associations and community leaders oppose the project because it would be located in a deteriorated commercial corridor between two strip malls that are magnets for gang members, homeless people and drug traffic.
“That’s a bad spot for a library, or a housing project,” said Pastor Alton Rozar of the Lake View Terrace Baptist Church, which is on the same block as the proposed 88-unit Library Village project. Rozar, pastor of the church for 18 years, and others said the area would benefit more from economic development than a residential project.
The president of the San Fernando Valley Branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the head of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. also oppose Library Village.
Alarcon is sponsoring a public hearing on the project at 7 p.m. Monday at the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center.
A representative of the project’s developer--the Neighborhood Economic and Employment Development Inc., or NEED--said he had not heard about any objections. “Everybody that I’ve talked to, they’ve really been into it,” said Steve Martinez, of the North Hills-based NEED. “I don’t know anybody who lives in that area who is against it. Who would oppose a new library?”
Officials and community leaders agree that the area has long needed a library. But Sandra Hubbard of the homeowners’ association objects to the idea combining a housing project with a library on that section of Foothill Boulevard. “We are extremely upset,” she said. “We asked for a library, not low-income housing. It’s taking away valuable commercial property and turning it residential.”
Land for the library component of the project has been donated by American Housing Construction Inc. of Encino, which designated 21,000 square feet of the 2.7-acre site for a new library. The company purchased the property with a $1.8-million loan from the city.
“We’re donating the library land no matter what,” said Albert Otero, vice president of American Housing Construction Inc. “If the community doesn’t want it, they can buy land somewhere else. It would be a big loss.”
Otero said monthly rent for a four-bedroom, two-bath unit with a two-car garage in Library Village would be $400.
