Neighbors Give Freeway Extension Mixed Reviews

In the clear light of day Tuesday, the winners and losers in the decades-long fight over the Long Beach Freeway extension were obvious.

Business leaders and officials from Pasadena and Alhambra held a jubilant celebration at Pasadena City Hall a day after the federal government formally approved the project.

In South Pasadena, which has fought the freeway for 33 years, city leaders backed away from initial claims of victory and admitted that the only way to kill the freeway that would slice through the center of their city may be through the courts. The City Council could authorize a lawsuit at a meeting tonight.

“This train has left the station, and everybody is on board except for South Pasadena,” said Alhambra City Manager Julio Fuentes.

After three decades of delays, lawsuits and studies, the U.S. Department of Transportation late Monday formally approved the 6.2-mile roadway connecting the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways.

When word of the decision leaked out Monday night, South Pasadena officials mistakenly believed that it contained a clause that could potentially derail the project and declared victory. But on Tuesday, after reading the document, they instead declared war.

“The judicial condemnation of this process will kill this project once and for all,” predicted the city’s lawyer, Antonio Rossman. “We’ve got war.”

For three decades, South Pasadena pinned its hopes on showing the federal government that the environmental impact of the freeway would be so destructive it should never be built. But the federal government effectively rejected that argument Monday night, and most observers agreed that only a judge can now stop the highway.

“Once decisions are made as to alignment and where it’s going to go, there are jobs to be had, contracts to be let--and also the sense that communities just want to get this over with,” said John Phillips, a Washington attorney who has fought freeways in the past, including the Century Freeway. “It’s very, very difficult when you’re at the end of the line, unless you’ve got some legal tricks in your hand.”

Phillips, who briefly worked for South Pasadena battling the freeway in the 1970s, said those cases are hard to make.

“If you go through the hoops and do everything as they [the government] apparently have . . . it’s very, very hard for courts to second-guess administrators,” he said.

Rossman argued that South Pasadena has a stronger case than most freeway opponents because the roadway would cut through the heart of the small city of 24,000.

“Look at what’s at stake,” Rossman said. “Yes, a lot of environmental lawsuits are lost these days when the issues are aesthetics or a nice hillside . . . but here you’re talking about the very viability of a city.”

Rossman also said his hand is strengthened by the EPA’s recent calls for new analysis before construction begins, and a letter questioning the freeway from the Council on Historic Preservation, an independent federal agency.

In addition to the lawsuit, South Pasadena could revive an injunction granted in 1973 that prevented work on the freeway but did not prevent the government from studying the project.

With the Clinton administration now on board, design work can begin on the roadway that slices through Pasadena, South Pasadena and parts of the Eastside neighborhood of El Sereno. After that is completed, the government will reassess the environmental impact of the project, a concession to South Pasadena that the city’s lawyer dismissed as “meaningless.”

Once that is finished, the California Department of Transportation can clear the 900 homes and 6,000 trees in the path of the freeway, then start construction.

All that is inevitable after Monday’s decision, said Pasadena Mayor Chris Holden. “The debate over whether to complete the freeway is over,” he said at the celebration on the steps of City Hall.

South Pasadena’s allies blasted the decision. In a statement, the National Trust for Historic Preservation expressed “deep disappointment” with the approval. “It’s a disaster,” said David Czamanske, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Pasadena chapter.

It was unclear Tuesday what effect the federal decision will have on a civil rights lawsuit by El Sereno residents alleging that planners did not give the largely Latino neighborhood the same consideration as more affluent South Pasadena.

Angela Johnson Mezaros, an attorney for the El Sereno residents, said she remains in settlement negotiations with Caltrans but is worried that the federal decision may change the dynamics of those talks.

South Pasadena’s suit could tie up the process for years, perhaps even killing it. And that rankles freeway proponents.

“That has been their strategy all along, to delay and delay. . . . Another three years, another five and it will be cost-prohibitive to build,” said Alhambra City Councilwoman Barbara Messina.

She also expressed frustration with South Pasadena’s opposition after changes were made in the design to lessen the impact on the city.

“You could line the streets of South Pasadena with gold and they still would not have accepted it,” she said.

Times staff writer Miles Corwin contributed to this story.