Drawn by a Sense of Belonging

Even though Rosa and Michael Nash were renting in Inglewood when they began hunting for a first house in 1992, they were unfamiliar with the city’s Morningside Park area.

But when the young couple heard about a three-bedroom one-bath house in the $160,000 range on Seventh Avenue near Century Boulevard, they decided to take a look.

The Nashes--he’s a musician, she’s a registered nurse--arrived to find that the nearest parking spot was several houses down from the one they had come to see. When they got out of the car, their daughter, Ashley, then age 1, began to walk along the sidewalk while the Nashes followed.

Rosa Nash still shakes her head at what happened next. “My baby walked straight toward the house we had come to see,” she recalled. “She seemed to know which one was ours.”

Somehow, Rosa Nash believes, her daughter knew this was where they belonged. And it’s a sense of belonging that Morningside Park residents like most about their middle-class neighborhood of mostly single-family homes.

“We all know each other,” said Gloria Gray, a health care administrator who raised two daughters in the two-bedroom, one-bath house on 82nd Place that she bought in the mid-1960s for $26,500. Gray marvels at the low turnover rate on her street--many of the same people who lived there when she arrived more than 30 years ago remain, having added on to their homes rather than leaving for more expensive neighborhoods.

“There’s so much stability, it’s like a family,” Gray said.

For Vivian and Willie Lykes it is family. The Lykeses raised three children in what started as a two-bedroom one-bath house that now, with the addition of a second story, has five bedrooms and two baths.

Both of their daughters have recently bought homes in Morningside Park, one of them only three houses down from her parents. “They love it here,” Vivian Lykes said.

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Morningside Park, in the northeastern corner of Inglewood, is bounded by Hollywood Park, the Great Western Forum and the Inglewood Park Cemetery on the west; Century Boulevard on the south; 76th Street on the north and Van Ness Avenue on the east.

Among its attractions is its central location--close to Los Angeles International Airport, the beach, and the San Diego and Century freeways. But beyond geography, residents point to a community spirit and pride of ownership that pervades the area.

The Nashes discovered that spirit on the day they moved in, when a neighbor arrived, unannounced, with a well-stocked lunch tray and cold drinks. Gray’s next-door neighbors insist that she honk when she returns from work late at night so that they can see her safely to the door.

Most of the homes in Morningside Park are Spanish stucco, built in the 1930s and ‘40s. “It’s not an area where there are tracts,” says Larry Springs of Century 21-Ray Shire Inglewood, who has worked in the area for 12 years.

“The homes are similar in some ways but unique in others,” he said. “They’re characterized by moldings, arches and tile work, by formal dining rooms and hardwood floors and by spacious backyards.”

Prices range from about $150,000 for a two-bedroom, one-bath 1,300-square-foot property east of Crenshaw Boulevard to about $210,000, typically for a four-bedroom, two-bath with more than 2,000 square feet on the western portion of Morningside Park, where the homes tend to be larger.

Inglewood is one of the oldest cities in the Los Angeles area, having been laid out in 1888. As late as the 1960s, businesses thrived along the Manchester and Crenshaw corridors. “During those times, Inglewood was like a Beverly Hills to young people,” Gray said.

Ted Brass, a Realtor with Century 21 the Service Co., who has worked in the area for 18 years, added that many white-collar and highly skilled blue-collar African Americans came to Morningside Park in the 1960s and ‘70s from what was known as the “East Side,” referring to areas of South-Central Los Angeles just east of the Harbor Freeway.

“Morningside Park was always thought of as a very desirable area, and that hasn’t changed,” Brass said.

What has changed--for the worse--over the years is the health of Inglewood’s business community. Movie theaters, supermarkets, auto dealerships and department stores have disappeared, an exodus many longtime residents attribute in part to “white flight” as the area’s demographics changed from racially mixed to predominantly African American in Morningside Park and increasingly Latino in the rest of Inglewood.

The city still has a core of large businesses to bolster its tax base--Hollywood Park, the Forum, the Inglewood Park Cemetery and Daniel Freeman and Centinela hospitals. But the rest of Inglewood has suffered, with commercial vacancy rates soaring as high as 30%.

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There are encouraging signs of a commercial comeback on the heels of a major effort undertaken by the city to revitalize its downtown area.

“Our challenge is to harness the influx of visitors who stream in and out of the Forum and Hollywood Park, to make them want to stop so that our businesses will benefit,” said Curren Price, a Morningside Park resident and former Inglewood councilman.

Price, 46, whose family moved to Morningside Park when he was in his teens and who now lives with his wife, Suzette, in a two-bedroom house on Third Avenue near Manchester Boulevard, is quick to point out that the revitalization initiative wasn’t driven by a decline in the neighborhoods.

“One of the things that attracted people to the area when I was growing up--the nicely kept residential streets--has not changed,” he said.

Among other benefits, Price believes, the well-kept properties send a message to would-be criminals that the members of the community are serious about protecting their investments. Moreover, residents and the city’s police department have forged an active partnership that has contributed to a feeling among most Morningside Park residents that their streets are safe.

Several years ago, the city’s police department received federal funding to establish Inglewood Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving, or I-COPPS. Under the program, officers in four drop-in neighborhood centers work with residential block club captains on community-identified safety issues.

“We rely heavily on citizens for information, and they have been very supportive,” said Beatrice Roller, senior lead officer for the Morningside Park I-COPPS center. “This has enabled us to be much more proactive.”

“It’s just neighbors looking after neighbors,” said Laverne Mann, a retired Pacific Bell employee and a block club captain who raised four children in Morningside Park and still lives on Fifth Avenue with her husband, Willie, a retired aircraft machinist.

Although safety is always a primary concern, Mann’s group, representing about 90 homes, meets regularly to discuss a variety of issues and to plan such events as the Fiesta on Fifth Avenue, an end-of-summer pot-luck block party for which the street is closed to traffic, and Avenue of the Arches, an annual Christmas celebration for which lawns are decorated and outdoor arches are lighted on Fifth between Arbor Vitae Street and Century Boulevard.

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Gray, who won a seat on the Inglewood School Board in 1994, served as president and still serves as member, embodies the spirit of community activism, having ascended to the leadership post despite the fact that her own children are in their early 30s.

Her district faces the challenge of restoring the schools’ tattered infrastructure at the same time that they are implementing initiatives to improve learning. Following a special program designed to enhance reading, five Inglewood elementary schools posted test scores above the 50th percentile.

Though Morningside Park schools were not among them, Gray is optimistic that the district is moving in the right direction. “We’re taking a collaborative approach to improving our schools that includes residents, city officials and the business community,” she explained.

One potential drawback to Morningside Park--airplane noise from LAX--is shrugged off by residents.

“At first it was frightening,” said Nash, who, living off of Century Boulevard, is closer to the flight path than some. “Now, unless a friend is here with me to point it out, I don’t even notice.” Nonetheless, the city of Inglewood has established a noise-abatement program designed to assist homeowners in better insulating their properties.

For the Nashes, the main thing was to find an area where their children would be safe. Today, Rosa Nash insists that in Morningside Park they got that and more.

“If I were to win the lottery, it wouldn’t be a split-second decision of, ‘Let’s move,’ ” she says. “We would really have to think about whether we wanted to buy in a more expensive area or stay and add on to our house, knowing we already have the most wonderful neighbors.”