Playing the Tenant Card in Skateboard Park Battle

David Chen makes himself out to be a landlord most concerned about the comfort of his tenants. That’s why he’s so dead set against a proposed park for skateboarders next to his 25-unit apartment building in Westlake, a very poor, crowded and recreationally challenged community west of downtown L.A.

Chen even hired a lawyer to make sure the city didn’t approve the park plan pitched by People in Progress, a nonprofit group that offers drug prevention, counseling and housing services for inner-city residents.

On respectable law firm letterhead, the attorney claimed that noisy skaters would pose an “undue disturbance” to Chen’s immigrant renters, many of whom work at night and try to sleep during the day. Also, a skate park would attract “undesirable elements” like gangsters, vandals and trespassers. Chen was especially worried because his building’s swimming pool is right next to the park site, now a scruffy, empty lot. Skaters could easily jump a fence to take a dip.

“This pool is intended for the use and enjoyment of Mr. Chen’s tenants,” stated Chen’s attorney, Douglas F. Galanter.

I’m no lawyer, but don’t pools need water for people to get any use and enjoyment out of them? Chen’s pool doesn’t have a drop of it. It’s been empty for at least a year, Chen’s tenants say, drained after authorities shut it down for lack of maintenance. Galanter declined to answer questions about his client’s property, and Chen did not respond to a request for an interview.

Tenants say they’ve tried in vain to get Chen to fix it so their kids can learn to swim. Instead, children have been playing in the empty pool, which the city considers dangerous.

That’s the way I found it last week after a hearing on the skate park by the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals. Chen and his lawyer were there, looking respectable. So were the park’s other principal opponents, clerics in black cassocks from nearby St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, also concerned about noise and crime.

This was round two in the fight to build L.A.’s first skate park, like those sprouting up in suburbs from Simi Valley to Huntington Beach and Encinitas. Inner-city skaters deserve a spot of their own, proponents argue, instead of being bused by a nonprofit group to parks in far-off Orange or Ventura.

I became a bit of a hero to skateboarders some weeks ago with a column about their misunderstood and maligned sport. Rather than treating skateboarders as a nuisance, I wrote, we should learn to appreciate an urban pastime that breaks down barriers of class and race.

Ironically, snippets of that column were used by the skate park opponents to enhance the fear of the sport. I had noted that parks can’t contain skaters whose passion is the street. That comment was used to underscore the argument that skaters would run amok in the residential areas surrounding the proposed park.

Resistance to skate parks is expected. People everywhere worry about encouraging the congregation of rambunctious boys. So far, most parks are located in suburban areas where residents have the clout and the resources to find solutions.

In poor areas, solutions are more elusive. Space and money are tighter. Fear is easier to tap. In Westlake, opponents warned that a new skate park would become a gang hangout. Even the city’s associate zoning czar, Albert Landini, cited the potential for “asocial behavior” when he first rejected the park plan in May.

Two uniformed LAPD officers downplayed the dangers and stuck up for skateboarders at the hearing. Officer Robert Vargas said he grew up in the area near the Rampart Division where he now works. The kids really need a place to go, he said. If they get it, they’ll respect it.

No use. The zoning board unanimously stuck by Landini’s denial. Stay tuned for round three: appeal to the City Council.

Zoning laws, Landini told me afterward, are primarily designed to protect residential property owners like Mr. Chen. But my inquiries about Chen’s three-story building sparked a city inspection Thursday. A housing official found graffiti and leaking pipes in the underground garage, cockroaches in some units, missing exit signs in the dingy corridors and no lock on the gate leading to that empty pool.

Nevertheless, Chen was positively beaming as he left the hearing two days earlier. You would think he had succeeded in helping his tenants preserve their “quality of life,” as his lawyer’s letter put it.

The poor, apparently, can live without skate parks--and without water in their swimming pools.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or online at agustin.gurza@latimes.com