The Mixed-Use Concept of Zoning was...

When Lianne Gold, 38, saw a crack dealer plying his trade in front of her Abbot Kinney Boulevard home in Venice, she did not call the police. Rather, she rushed out, by herself, at 11 p.m, incensed that the culprit invaded her neighborhood.

“I told him to leave,” recalls Gold. “I didn’t ask; you don’t ask people like that. You raise your voice and shout at them, and that’s what I did.”

Leave he did, never to return--despite the fact that a mere block away, gangs trade gunfire and drugs.

The tale is significant because it speaks to a trend beginning to sweep Los Angeles--a revitalization of neighborhoods based on siting homes, small businesses and community areas side by side. In its most traditional form, the merchant or artist often lives behind or within walking distance of his or her business.

This mixed-use concept was abandoned amid the post-World War II explosion of the suburbs, with zoning regulations segregating businesses and residences. Thus, throughout much of the country, bustling downtown areas often became no man’s lands after hours, while residential areas had whole blocks that were virtually deserted during work hours. All of this brought longer commutes, anonymous neighborhoods and a rising fear of crime.

Which is why the fate of Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard is so important.

Abbot Kinney founded Venice in the early 1900s as an idiosyncratic seaside resort modeled on its Italian namesake, providing relaxation for the city’s weary masses. Even as the city of Los Angeles subsequently absorbed Venice, however, Abbot Kinney Boulevard, which is just east of its well-known canals, escaped largely unnoticed, keeping intact Venice’s small-town traditions.

Four years ago, after decades of regulating against mixed-use occupancy, the city once more legitimized the concept. And over the next decade, mixed-use projects will grow to encompass more than 5% of all Los Angeles residents, says city planning director Con Howe.

Abbot Kinney Boulevard, with its long head start, is an important, if eclectic, model for the rest of Los Angeles.

Ask the people on Abbot Kinney Boulevard why they are there, and the answer, in differing words, is invariably the same: quality of life.

Thus, Richard Schiffer, 30, co-owner of Abbot’s Pizza, says he not only knows his customers on a first-name basis, “I know beforehand the kind of slice they’re going to order.”

During slow periods, brother Tom Schiffer, 27, says, he likes “to b.s. for an hour or two with customers over a slice of pizza. We encourage it here.”

A recent conversation ranged from the future of religion to whether the grunge look is Generation X’s attempt to rediscover 1960s hippie ideals. Tom punctuated the first topic by rolling up his sleeve to display an entire biblical verse tattooed on his arm--in Hebrew.

In short, the pizza shop doubles as a sort of Athenian forum. And partially because of this, the brothers know not only their customers’ personalities, but also those of their dogs.

Nearly everyone on the boulevard seems to have a dog, but the best-known one--the leader of the pack, if you will--is Sonny, a massive mongrel owned by the proprietor of a nearby coffee shop. Sonny likes to roam the boulevard unleashed, a virtual one-dog Neighborhood Watch.

On most mornings, Sonny shows up at the pizzeria’s front door, where he listens as Tom tells him to go around back. There, Sonny finds his reward: a few slices of pizza--and not just the plain cheese variety. Sonny has his preferences, and his favorite, says Tom, is pepperoni pizza.

Why does Tom feed him? “I’ve known Sonny for a couple of years now, and we’re friends,” replies Tom.

A few doors down, Michael Stern, 27, assistant manager of Abbot’s Habit coffee shop, is shaking his head at how the once-respectable neighborhood in which he grew up is going down the tubes. His views are not standard Chamber of Commerce stuff.

One of his favorite hangouts, says Stern, used to be the nearby canals. But now, he says, “They fixed the canals. And they ruined them.”

In the good old days, “the canals were like old buildings; they had character.” But now, he laments, “They’re just sterile,” engineered merely “to boost property values.”

Stern relates all this while taking an order for a sandwich, as the customer--another local resident--sidles over to the kitchen to watch his sandwich being prepared.

Several doors down lives Carol Tantau-Smith, 51, president of the Venice Chamber of Commerce and co-owner for 14 years of a gift shop specializing in handcrafted items. Walk in and you’ll find a store downstairs, a loft office above, and a two-story residence in back. The residence boasts a baby grand piano, allowing Tantau-Smith to practice her Beethoven while watching her customers shop from behind a one-way mirror.

While the arrangement allows Tantau-Smith to nap at home on a slow afternoon, it also has its drawbacks. With the store’s front door open 12 hours a day, “the door to my home is also open,” she says. So, Tantau-Smith has devised various ways to be “not home” even when she is, including training her employees “to be very good at being stupid” about her whereabouts, she admits.

Still, she says, she has glimpses into the lives of hundreds of neighborhood residents, and she is “fascinated by them. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

Tantau-Smith helped the boulevard reverse its fortunes a few years ago when she was among the leaders of a drive to change the street’s name to Abbot Kinney Boulevard. She also helped raise $30,000 to plant 100 palm trees.

As the trees started growing and the street found its identity, the half-dozen storefronts that had been vacant for years suddenly filled with new tenants. Indeed, Gold managed to snag her home and designer furniture store two years ago strictly by word of mouth. Friends told Gold about the site, and she signed the lease before the vacancy sign went up.

Why the rush to move here? “The quality of friendships here is really great. It’s the first time in my life that I feel I actually fit into a neighborhood,” Gold said.

Lise Matthews, 48, who heads her own architectural firm across the street, also tells of how, when she came to Los Angeles, “it took me a long time to find a part of the city that felt like my hometown”--New Orleans. While living temporarily in Malibu, she “found this street, where everything is on a walking scale.”

“There’s a real texture here, a sense of history and identity to the neighborhood,” said Matthews, which prompted her to abandon Malibu for Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

That neighborhood feeling can be replicated if planners “concentrate on creating community nodal points” like the ones found in the boulevard’s cafes, she says. Separating small businesses from residences tends to deaden the community, she says.

Watching Abbot Kinney Boulevard come into its own, many locals are guardedly optimistic that it will continue to grow, despite gang violence in adjacent Oakwood. And rather than relying on additional police patrols for safety, the boulevard’s primary line of defense is a neighborhood populated day and night, weekday and weekend, by people who live and work with one another.

As urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote in her landmark book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (published by Random House in 1961), the neighborhood’s safety is no longer left primarily to a faraway city administration. Rather, the well-being of the neighborhood becomes the personal concern of each resident and merchant, the streets becoming an extension of their living rooms and offices.

In such a neighborhood, with its 24-hour-a-day vitality, small businesses that could not turn a profit on only workday or after-hours crowds can flourish, adding further life--and safety--to the streets.

Which may help explain why Gold was able to single-handedly venture onto the street and chase away the crack dealer. For Gold wasn’t acting alone. She knew that her neighbors--people with whom she has coffee, plans her business and leaves her keys when she’s away--are watching out for her.

On that shared sense of neighborhood, above all else, may well hang the fate of Abbot Kinney Boulevard--and perhaps, too, the future of Los Angeles.