An Upheaval That Never Came

Marengo Terrace is a neighborhood in limbo.

After years of expecting to be uprooted by a new hospital to replace the nearby County-USC Medical Center, the 155 families who live along the sloping blocks are still waiting to learn when they have to leave their homes.

They waited while their neighbors across Chicago and Cummings streets were bought out and the row of neat bungalows was torn down to make room for the expected medical facility. For the last four years, that block has been a vacant, grassy lot, surrounded by a chain-link fence and “No Trespassing” signs.

They waited while local and state officials have bitterly squabbled over how large the replacement for the earthquake-damaged hospital should be. More time passed as a final decision was bogged down in complicated discussions of patient-to-bed ratios, acute versus outpatient care and indigent medical care.

Some waited in fear of losing their homes, others in hope that generous buyout and relocation payments would give them a better life in the suburbs.

“They said they were going to buy our homes, one way or another,” said Maria Carrillo, 50, who has lived for 21 years on Cornwell Street. “But they haven’t told us anything.”

What residents had not heard is that the site of the new building changed and the size of the hospital shrank, making it unlikely that there would be any need to tear down the small, wood-frame houses and stucco apartments on the hilly streets east of the current medical center. State and county officials are also discussing building a satellite hospital in Baldwin Park, making it even less likely that the remaining Marengo Terrace homes will need to be torn down.

But no one told the neighbors that.

In this Boyle Heights community, where residents are accustomed to hearing the constant wail of ambulance sirens, neighbors feel powerless and frustrated that they have been seemingly forgotten.

For some, the threat of having to move stirs up memories of other mainly Latino communities displaced by construction of the freeways, public housing projects and Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine over the decades.

“This is the barrio I know,” said Carrillo, who was at first upset to hear her family would have to leave their tan house. Her three daughters go to school and work in the area, and she knows all her neighbors.

‘Not Knowing Is Worse’

But Carrillo said she slowly adjusted to the idea, and thought about buying a new home in Montebello with the money the county was going to pay her.

“Not knowing is worse than having to leave,” she said. “We can’t do anything, because we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Regular monthly meetings were held at a nearby high school to let neighbors know the status of the hospital proposal. County officials say that they never committed to buying the properties, but just told residents it was likely.

Then in 1996, officials say, they told residents that the project was on hold.

However, the two blocks in question are not included in the current design for a 600-bed hospital, down from the original plan for 946 beds. Officials with the Department of Public Works officials say that they have been advised by the county counsel not to tell residents anything until the environmental impact report for the new facility is complete and approved by the Board of Supervisors, late this year.

“Our concern is that there’s a need to coordinate notices [to the community] with the environmental process,” said Harry Stone, director of the Department of Public Works, which is coordinating the project. “It restricts what we can and cannot say until the board takes an action. We do not want to invalidate the process.”

But Supervisor Gloria Molina, who represents the area, said the department’s staff told her that they were keeping the community up to date, and had even hired a consultant to do outreach work.

After being told by The Times and then public works officials that residents had not been informed about the status of the project, Molina said she was upset.

“It seems as though public works has been totally deficient in this whole area,” she said.”It’s been very, very distressing to me.”

After a request from Molina, Stone and the county counsel’s office are drafting an announcement for residents explaining that further properties will not be needed if the 600-bed design is approved by federal and county officials. Residents should receive the mailers by the end of this week, officials said.

“We’d like to have better communication, and we’re working on trying to rectify that,” Stone said.

Meanwhile, some residents have put off home repairs, figuring it would be foolish to invest in a home they would have to leave behind. Still others have wanted to move and felt trapped, unable to persuade buyers to take a house the county would probably demolish.

On Chicago Street, Mariaelena Alonzo sits on her porch in the evenings, stares at the hospital looming up beyond the empty, overgrown field where her neighbors used to live, and wonders what is going to happen to her home.

All she knows about the complex political battle over the rebuilding of the facility is that it has left her family feeling unsettled.

“No one has told us anything in a long time,” said Alonzo, 56, who raised her six children in the small white house with green trim. “Everyone wants to move because the neighborhood was left ugly. But no one knows what’s going on.”

Her son Gus Cervantes, 33, added: “They can’t just go to a neighborhood and leave it like this.”

Originally, the county planned to replace the aging hospital with a facility that would have taken up the two blocks east to Cornwell Street. But as engineers were designing that facility, the 1994 Northridge earthquake hit, seriously damaging two buildings in the medical center and forcing them to be closed, with demolition planned.

That made land available, allowing the new hospital to be built farther to the southwest, avoiding the need to tear down the remaining Marengo Terrace homes.

Amid budget constraints, a battle erupted between the majority of the supervisors, who voted to build a less expensive facility with 600 beds, and Molina, who sought 750.

Negotiating a Compromise

State lawmakers in favor of the larger hospital threatened to withhold funding from the county unless it built the 750-bed hospital. Recently, state and county officials began negotiating a compromise: building the 600-bed facility at County-USC along with a smaller hospital in Baldwin Park.

Confused Marengo Terrace residents are trying to decipher how the negotiations will affect their homes.

In the last year, the Department of Public Works has spent more than $66,000 on contracts with consulting firms to do community outreach. , but officials admit that nothing has been communicated to the neighbors yet.

Chicago Street resident Celia Cabrera said she has called county offices in vain for the last year.

“It’s awful not to know whether you’re going to move or not,” said Cabrera. “I thought I would stay here for the rest of my years. Why haven’t they informed us?”

Cabrera said she needs a new floor and faucets, but her landlord will not make repairs because he thinks the county is going to buy the house. She and her husband live in dread of being uprooted from the home they’ve lived in for 19 years.

“We’re scared,” she said. “It makes us nervous just to even talk about it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Awaiting Word

Residents of Marengo Terrace have been waiting for the last four years to hear if they will need to move to make room for the new County-USC Medical Center.