Freeway Route Shifted to Spare Historic District : Transportation: Caltrans proposes moving part of the 710 extension west into South Pasadena.

Caltrans unveiled plans Wednesday to shift a portion of the proposed Long Beach Freeway extension west, saving 154 dwellings, including historic sites, from being razed but targeting 88 other houses for demolition.

Caltrans Chief Environmental Planner Ron Kosinski said the agency consulted with the Federal Highway Administration in moving a stretch three-quarters of a mile long about 400 feet to the west, thus avoiding a five-block El Sereno historic district and the South Pasadena neighborhood where the historic Grokowsky House is located.

Last month the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places identified El Sereno’s Shortline Villa tract, a triangle bordered by Alpha Street to the west, Kendall Avenue to the north and Berkshire Drive to the southeast, as eligible for historic designation. In part because of that finding, federal officials asked for a new environmental impact report on how the freeway would affect the El Sereno district.

Caltrans first proposed building the 6.2-mile freeway extension through El Sereno, South Pasadena and Pasadena 30 years ago; South Pasadena officials and other groups have been fighting it ever since.

“Basically, this alteration will take fewer houses and cost about the same,” Kosinski said at the news conference Wednesday announcing the opening of a community outreach office in El Sereno on the freeway route change.

Accompanying him were city leaders from Alhambra, which supports the freeway extension because it would pull commuters off that city’s surface streets.

The agency has sent letters to the owners of 52 houses in South Pasadena and 35 in El Sereno, informing them about the new plan. Caltrans asked for property owners’ comments by Jan. 25 but did not spell out their homes’ future.

In order to build along the newly proposed path, Caltrans would have to purchase all 88 houses between South Pasadena’s Gillette Crescent to the west and El Sereno’s Huntington Drive to the east.

The agency already has purchased 610 houses to build the freeway, and has come under attack for letting many of those homes fall into disrepair.

Freeway opponents and residents along the the new route shouted down Caltrans and Alhambra officials at the news conference, calling the change a desperate move to save the freeway.

“We thought our house was safe. We’ve lived in it for 45 years since we built it,” said Eugene Peron, who lives with his wife, Joanne, in a three-bedroom home on Maycrest Avenue in South Pasadena.

“We got Caltrans’ letter right before Christmas, but we only learned today it meant the destruction of our home,” Joanne Peron said.

An newly affected El Sereno homeowner reacted with disbelief.

“I couldn’t believe they would do this right at Christmas,” Mario Interiano said.

Antonio Rossmann, legal counsel for the city of South Pasadena, said the change in the route is significant--even though Caltrans called it a “minor alteration”--and that it can only delay the 30-year-old project further because it will require environmental study.

But Caltrans’ Kosinski said his agency’s preliminary judgment was that such a study was unnecessary and that the change in route would not require the approval of the California Transportation Commission, which had approved the previous path. There have been more than 24 routes and seven environmental studies, according to Caltrans.

Nonetheless, Hugo Garcia of El Sereno Action Committee, said a similar change in 1986 to spare a South Pasadena neighborhood led to a study that took six years.

“This demonstrates Caltrans’ environmental racism,” Garcia said. “The wealthy areas of Pasadena and South Pasadena got years; we’re getting a few weeks.”

Garcia joined a host of civil rights group in a recent lawsuit against the freeway that alleges that working-class, largely Latino El Sereno did not get the same mitigation as the more white and affluent areas of South Pasadena and Pasadena.

Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Interior advised the Federal Highway administrator, who will make the final decision on the freeway, that it wanted a supplemental environmental report, citing among other concerns the historic district and possible inequitable treatment of El Sereno.

Caltrans officials replied Wednesday that the new route would take the freeway 300 feet farther from Sierra Vista Elementary School in El Sereno.

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Revised Freeway Route

Caltrans officials unveiled plans Wednesday to shift a three- quarter mile stretch of the proposed Long Beach Freeway extension 400 feet west to bypass houses in newly identified El Sereno historic district.