Gripe : ‘Do We Want Our Kids Hanging Out at the Racetrack?’

Arcadia residents have been good neighbors to the Santa Anita racetrack for as long as I can remember. We learned to ignore the sounds of race calls wafting over our peaceful neighborhoods from a loud public address system. We didn’t pay much attention to the crime statistics that we felt rose and fell according to racetrack schedules.

Homeowners have tried to be grateful for the tax revenue that comes to the city from the racetrack. But the state and the county gobble up a lion’s share of the proceeds. In the past five years, Arcadia only received about $4 million a year in revenue, a small percentage of the city’s budget. And that is partially offset by the city services required by the track and its patrons.

Lately, our neighbor is getting to be even harder to get along with, and our patience has begun to wear thin. The Santa Anita Corp. asked the city to allow off-track betting until the early morning hours. And the facilities often are used for noisy dances and musical performances. We’ve had to endure loud music, the shouts of young people leaving these events, squealing tires, bottles thrown from car windows and drag races (sometimes lethal ones) down Huntington Drive.

Now Santa Anita officials have made the most unneighborly move of all, asking for a zoning change so that they can fill their parking lot with 1.5 million square feet of new construction. They plan to build a gaudy “entertainment center”--movie theaters that will seat 5,000 people, a six-story IMAX theater right in front of the Turf Club, a roller blade arena, sports bars, fast food stands, shops and auditoriums, disgorging thousands of cars full of restless “entertainment” seekers into the streets of nearby communities.

My friends who live in the hills adjacent to the neon lights of the Universal CityWalk complain bitterly of the noise, traffic, graffiti, gang activity, loiterers and litter as people from many miles around are attracted to the glittery excitement there.

We formed a neighborhood group to get this issue put on the ballot. Arcadia homeowners, who are surely going to suffer decreased property values as a result of this proposed urbanization, should be the ones to decide how badly they want 25 new movie theaters down the street.

Of course, while the developers await city approval, they are promising all kinds of “community benefits” from their planned project, telling us our kids can hold their school plays and hockey games at the entertainment center. But do we want our kids hanging out at the racetrack for school events?

All we want is to have Arcadia again be the “community of homes” that the city seal so proudly proclaims. We want to retain those peaceful days when the most menacing sound heard in Arcadia in the middle of the night was the call of the peacocks at the Arboretum, not the blast of gunfire.