Hundreds March Against 710 Freeway Extension

It was one more march in a 35-year-old war.

This time hundreds of people who have fought against the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway walked Saturday through the old clapboard neighborhoods of tree-lined streets and wide front porches that have lived under the freeway’s threat for decades.

They came from South Pasadena, Pasadena and El Sereno, which lie in the freeway’s path, to protest the $1.4-billion project that is expected to get final Federal Highway Administration approval in a few weeks.

“Where are you going to relocate 1,000 homes?” asked John Gamon of South Pasadena. “Where are you going to move these people around here--condos?”

The 4.5-mile march along the proposed freeway’s route began in a Pasadena neighborhood of historical Craftsman homes and moved south along the manicured lanes of South Pasadena into El Sereno, one of the oldest communities in Los Angeles.

Along the way, protesters passed a string of decaying and vacant homes owned by the California Department of Transportation, most of them acquired as part of the freeway project in the 1960s and early ‘70s.

“They don’t even keep up their yards,” said Ray Watson, 62, as he passed a weed-choked, boarded-up house. “It’s like the hillbillies moved in.” The ponytailed South Pasadena resident carried a placard that showed a menacing orange bulldozer below the words “Death of a City.” Other protesters periodically shouted, “No 710!” as they pushed strollers and bikes or simply dawdled in the sun, talking and admiring the camphor trees.

This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the day the city of South Pasadena obtained an injunction to stop the purchases of homes on the freeway’s route until federal approval was obtained.

For more than three decades, opponents led by South Pasadena have used every legal and political device known to stop the project, which is expected to begin in 2005.

The proposed extension through the three communities would eliminate 900 homes, many of which were made at the turn of the century with materials like rock found in local arroyos. It also would uproot 6,000 trees, including giant, ancient oaks.

Tom and Mary Bryce would lose the home they built 50 years ago on what was then a palm tree orchard. Mary Bryce’s brother moved in down the street several months later and the families raised their children and grew old together. They have been part of the freeway fight from the beginning. “It’s been frustrating in that Caltrans has been so lousy and won’t even bend an inch,” said Mary Bryce, 78.

Most South Pasadena residents said they would most lament the loss of the city’s peaceful small town atmosphere.

“It’s a unique thing in Los Angeles,” said Andy Au, 33, who recently bought an old fixer-upper with his wife. “It’s Middle America near downtown L.A.”

Gamon agreed, saying he recognized most of his fellow marchers from his boy’s soccer games.

“We’ve got a wonderful neighborhood,” he said. “The neighbors look after kids. If my kids leave their bike in the frontyard, it’s there when we get up in the morning.”

South Pasadena residents have bitterly fought the roadway since the 1960s, but El Sereno activists joined the battle more recently when they filed a federal civil rights suit. The suit alleges that the government granted the wealthier South Pasadena and Pasadena design changes to alleviate the freeway’s impact, but did not do the same for El Sereno, a predominantly Latino community.

“We have not been represented fairly,” said activist Jesse Granados. “We feel we have been cheated out of the process. We have been cheated as Latinos.”

When the march ended at Sierra Vista School in El Sereno, Granados stepped onto a stage with other activists, politicians and residents to rally the crowd against the freeway.

Said Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Pasadena): “You are a model to this nation of what a community can do when they rise up and say no.”