Valley Emerges From ’97 With a New Sense of Self

Some lament it, others celebrate it, but “identity politics” have become a fixture on the American political landscape in the millennial twilight of the 1990s.

And as it comes to a close, 1997 may go down as the year when the San Fernando Valley forcefully threw its own identity into the mix, in an assertion of confidence and will that could have far-reaching impact on its government, schools and infrastructure well into the next century.

For more than any other, this has been the year in which the Valley came back with a vengeance from the political and economic doldrums of the recent past and demanded increasing recognition as a separate--and equal--entity from the rest of Los Angeles. On its feet again after a devastating recession and an even more devastating earthquake, the Valley began insisting that it could take care of itself, a rebellious streak seen in everything from the push for secession to the idea of a Valley transit authority.

“There’s very much a stronger sentiment in the Valley for Valley recognition, Valley independence. . . . It’s probably gotten to a higher visibility or boiling point than it has since the ‘70s,” said longtime City Councilman Hal Bernson, recalling the last time the Valley agitated so ardently for a municipal divorce.

Perhaps it was only fitting that 1997 should have witnessed a reinvigorated Valley identity. After all, the Valley officially turned 200 this year, marking two centuries of growth and change since Spanish priests first settled the area and erected the mission that gave the Valley its name.

In September, dignitaries, academics and residents joined for a look at the area’s past, present and future, a time to “stop and take stock,” as one official put it. Trying to broaden the Valley’s historical perspective and acknowledge its current diversity, the gathering pulled together representatives from various communities and cultures to celebrate unity on the occasion of the Valley’s birthday.

“It truly reflected the incredible diversity of the San Fernando Valley,” said City Councilman Richard Alarcon, a major sponsor of the celebrations. “I hope that in some small way it exhibited how people of diverse communities working together can create wonderful things.”

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But well before September, the Valley’s bicentennial year had already taken on a darker cast with tragedies and outbreaks of violence that made headlines not just in Southern California but around the nation. Suddenly, the Valley, where residents have long complained about not getting their fair share, had more than its due of high-profile crimes and gunplay, which resulted in deaths on both sides of the thin blue line.

On Feb. 25, a group of suspected robbers was trapped in a Northridge cul-de-sac after a bar holdup, chased there by two squad cars carrying members of the Police Department’s controversial Special Investigations Section. When one of the pursued leaned out of the car pointing a gun, the officers opened fire, killing three of the suspects.

The fourth, Michael Rochelle Smith, escaped injury in the fusillade but now stands trial for murder--although police have identified him as an informant who helped lead them to the others.

As bloody as the incident was, it was overshadowed less than a week later by a remarkable drama that unfolded with electrifying suspense on live television and thrust the Valley into the national spotlight: the North Hollywood shootout.

The pitched battle between police and a pair of bank robbers was the city’s most spectacular shootout in 20 years; the images are indelible: Two gunmen, draped in black, laden with such sophisticated automatic weaponry that police went scrambling to a local gun shop for firepower to match. Terrified customers being led out of the bank vault where they had been held captive. Staccato bursts of gunfire splitting the air as the robbers lumbered through neighborhood streets, spraying armor-piercing bullets at houses, cars and officers, 10 of whom were wounded before SWAT team members fatally shot the two, Larry Eugene Phillips and Emil Matasareanu.

Across the country, headlines screamed.

“Two bandits killed in storm of lead!” shouted the New York Daily News. “Shoot-’em-up in L.A. follows bank robbery gone bad,” cried a Memphis, Tenn., newspaper.

Here in the land of Hollywood, comparisons with violent movies such as “Heat” were inevitable, as residents and pundits held forth on life--and death--imitating art.

“I know war in my country,” said Orsana Rajanchyan, a native of Armenia who lives on the street where the robbers made their last stand. “But I never saw anything like this.”

Before the summer was out, the Valley saw three more deadly shootings involving police. Undercover cops on a Panorama City stakeout killed a 22-year-old father of three in May after the man demanded to know why they were in his neighborhood and brandished a sawed-off shotgun.

That same month, Charles Lazzaretto became the first Glendale police officer in 25 years to die in the line of duty when an attempted-murder suspect, holed up in a Chatsworth warehouse, shot Lazzaretto in the head. In the ensuing gunfight, the suspect was slain and two Los Angeles police officers wounded.

Perhaps the most bizarre incident of all occurred March 18 in Studio City, an apparent case of road rage between two veteran police officers in plain clothes who did not recognize each other as cops. After a shouting match on busy Cahuenga Boulevard, Det. Frank J. Lyga mortally wounded Officer Kevin L. Gaines, who was off duty.

“This is insane,” a police official declared afterward. “We’re not supposed to be doing this kind of stuff.”

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In spite of the deadly spate of shootings, crime in the Valley decreased, in line with a national trend, recording a double-digit drop over the first half of 1997. The Van Nuys Division alone registered an 18% dip in violent crime, while gang-related violence Valleywide declined by 17%.

Police and civic leaders partly credit the booming local economy, on an upswing after years of recession that squeezed private wallets and public coffers alike.

In the Valley’s residential housing market, more homes were sold last month--947--than in any November of the past decade. The average sales price for a single-family house in the Valley climbed 6% to $229,500, up from $217,500 a year ago.

“Our housing market is really on a major rebound. Right now it’s defying all the seasonal trends,” said Mel Wilson, president of the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors, which covers the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

“We haven’t had a market as strong as this since the late 1980s,” Wilson said, although prices have not returned to the high-water levels of the late ‘80s. “People seem to be confident in the economy overall.”

Even the Valley’s ravaged aerospace industry has staged a modest comeback, with Rocketdyne in Canoga Park hiring 400 new workers in the past year and seeking 250 more. Three Valley companies rank among the county’s 10 largest privately held firms.

And local shopping malls, an ineradicable element of the Valley identity ever since Moon Unit Zappa’s paean in “Valley Girl,” have not been immune to the spreading economic optimism. The Promenade in Woodland Hills has built new movie theaters, Northridge Fashion Center is planning to add more cinemas and restaurants, and Topanga Plaza is hoping to increase in size by more than 40% through a third floor of shops, a new department store and an enlarged Nordstrom.

“It’s, like, totally awesome,” Zappa would doubtless have said.

At least one sector of Valley life, however, did not appear to benefit from the revived economy. The Cal State Northridge athletics department, hit with an $800,000 budget deficit and state laws demanding gender equity, axed four men’s sports programs in June--baseball, soccer, swimming and volleyball.

The outcry was loud and immediate, reverberating all the way up to Sacramento, where legislators approved a one-time loan to the university to rescue the dropped sports. Last week, CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson announced that the teams would continue through the 1998-99 season and indicated they would survive after that, but only by dint of “a lot of effort and a lot of commitment from a lot of people.”

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CSUN’s ailing sports program aside, the region’s rosy economic picture helped put the Valley on more solid footing to assert itself and demand recognition, even independence. Free of the drag of a lingering recession and the aftermath of a terrifying earthquake, local politicians and activists pushed their Valley-specific agendas, the same way other groups, from women to minorities to gays, have pursued their own “identity politics” in the national arena.

The mantras have been easy, graspable. “Our fair share of tax-funded services.” “Greater control of our schools.” “Better public transit to move us around.”

Although she may not agree with all of the arguments, City Councilwoman Laura Chick counts the Valley’s renewed sense of self as a force for positive change, not a move toward the balkanization of Los Angeles, as some critics have painted the drive for more Valley autonomy.

“To me, all of this is good, because I want the Valley to be more aware of its needs and use that to get more involved in civic life,” Chick said.

Cityhood--a distant prospect at best--moved closer in 1997 than ever with the passage of the so-called Valley secession bill, which removes the City Council’s veto over breakaway movements.

To be sure, an independent San Fernando Valley would be a giant in its own right, the nation’s sixth-largest city. The process of secession, even before voters decide yes or no, could cost $2 million, much of it from tax dollars--an irony in an area famous for its anti-tax attitude. Nonetheless, secessionists aim to circulate petitions as early as next month to call for a study on the impacts of a Valley breakaway.

Skeptics doubt whether the issue has really captured the hearts and minds of the everyday Valley resident, as sexy as it sounds to politicos and the media.

“There’s always been a consciousness--not always positive, either--that we live in the Valley,” said veteran Valley political consultant Larry Levine. “The Valley has been the brunt of a lot of jokes and humor in the past years, and part of living in the Valley is being able to laugh at yourself.

“But I’m not sure how much of the political movement [for secession] is coming from the bottom up and how much is coming from the top down.”

At the same time, however, Levine sees the potential payoff for those who jump on the breakaway bandwagon.

“Out in the Valley, if you march to the drum of the secessionists, there are political rewards. If you don’t march to the beat, there are no political rewards,” he said.

Which may help explain this year’s vogue political activity: proposing discrete Valley institutions to solve the problems of the day, such as a Valley-based school system or a Valley transit authority. In short, identity politics.

True, the idea of splitting up the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District has rumbled through Valley political rhetoric much as the threat of killer bees has buzzed through the public consciousness off and on for several years.

But this year, ahead of the municipal secessionists, school district foes have launched their own petition campaign, gathering signatures to kick-start the public hearing process necessary for a breakup. Advocates envision not one, but two separate school systems contained wholly in the Valley, divided between north and south to provide more racial integration than an east-west split.

Fueling the drive for “Valley schools for Valley kids” has been the resurrection of long-shuttered campuses including Garden Grove Avenue Elementary School in Reseda, which was reopened in September to alleviate overcrowding and meet newly reduced teacher-student ratios in elementary schools. Already embedded in the national consciousness as community rallying points--think back to the little red schoolhouses of yore--public schools have emerged as an even stronger force for knitting residents together by expanding their mission to offer services from parent education to health care.

“They’re no longer single-purpose. They’re multipurpose institutions,” said Carolyn Ellner, dean of CSUN’s School of Education. “They are potentially the integrating centers of the community.”

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As with a separate Valley city, separate Valley school districts are, at the least, years away from reality. But a Valley transit zone responsible for running the area’s bus and rail lines could be closer.

The concept of such a zone, which would still come under the umbrella of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has been endorsed by all seven City Council members who represent portions of the Valley. Transit planners are now investigating the feasibility of the idea.

Others have gone further, recommending that the Valley slough off MTA control altogether and set up its own full-fledged transit agency.

Ironically, such proposals are being floated at a time when the Valley has finally been united with the rest of the city in a subway tunnel deep inside the Santa Monica Mountains. On Oct. 22, after more than two years of digging and spending millions of dollars, workers finally completed the link between Hollywood and North Hollywood, connecting the Valley to Union Station downtown.

And that, it appears, will be the end of the line for the Los Angeles subway. Out of money and out of political goodwill, the MTA has put a cross-Valley extension on hold, leaving residents still without a quick way of getting from Woodland Hills to Universal City after years of bickering over mass transit.

Frustration over such issues may well continue to energize the many-pronged movement for Valley autonomy in 1998. The Valley identity, much of it based on grievance, has now been firmly established in the minds of politicians and outspoken local activists.

But can a heightened sense of identity, rage and aggressiveness translate into tangible results--say, an independent Valley city?

Stay tuned, says Councilman Bernson.

“I don’t think it’s going to stop, but the real question is whether it’s going to swell,” he said of the Valley secession movement. “If some competent leadership rises in the Valley, I think there’s a distinct possibility to put [secession] on the ballot.

“But unless they bring forth that kind of leadership, it may just stay where it is.”