Residents of Complex Due for Demolition Renew Protest

In the latest twist to a decade-old saga, residents of a 1950s-era Mar Vista apartment village urged officials Thursday to revisit demolition of their rent-controlled property to make room for a large new residential complex.

While the city of Los Angeles years ago approved replacement of the 82-unit Westdale Village Apartments with a 204-unit project, residents hope to make developers set aside 29 apartments for current residents who are elderly--as old as 101.

In addition, Westdale residents and their neighbors want Los Angeles to impose a traffic improvement plan to ease the burden of more cars traveling along already crowded streets near the site, which spans two blocks along Sawtelle and National boulevards.

“Westdale is an invaluable resource to this city,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival.

“It is . . . affordable housing that, if it is lost, will never be replaced. And the city needs to embrace projects like this and preserve them, and that is the crime these tenants are facing,” he said.

As an older building covered by Los Angeles’ rent stabilization law, Westdale has apartments that rent for $500 to $1,200 a month, though the average price is $1,072. The proposed complex, with larger apartments, would have units renting for $1,400 to $2,100 a month.

Like many of the residents who gathered Thursday outside the city planning department to file an appeal of the project, Gross has long fought the dislocation of Westdale tenants.

The battle to block the development altogether was decided in 1992 amid assurances that included relocation assistance and permanent leases for the then 20 residents who had lived at Westdale before 1991.

But then the property was sold. Residents and their longtime advisor, attorney Ron Rouda, contend that the new owners have not committed to the same conditions as their predecessor. And after a city planner recently recommended final approval of the project, Rouda filed the appeal seeking a new environmental study.

“Putting restrictions on developers is not an unknown sort of thing in order to make a better project,” Rouda said as a dozen residents carried placards outside the planning department. “In this particular case, the developer, when he bought the property, knew about all the restrictions . . . and yet has chosen to ignore them.”

But Doug Wright, vice president of the developer, Archstone Communities, said the corporation is listening to Westdale residents.

“We are very aware of the potential impacts which our project may have upon them, and intend to be both sensitive and generous in our response. Archstone will comply with the guidelines and procedures mandated by the city of Los Angeles, and we are confident that our residents will be satisfied with the results,” Wright said.

Meantime, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who helped forge the previous settlement, said in a statement that she wants that agreement to prevail with Archstone.

Miscikowski’s chief of staff, Linda Bernhardt, expressed optimism, based on her talks with Archstone’s staff, that an agreement would be reached, not only for improved relocation assistance, but for a traffic control plan.

“We are going to do our absolute best to protect those residents, to get them as much financial support as possible for moving and relocation assistance,” said Bernhardt, who noted that current relocation would range from $2,000 to $5,000 per unit. “We want to make it as easy on them as possible and for those that had a [promised] lifetime lease, to make sure that commitment from prior owners will remain.”

But even with that promise, some longtime tenants, such as John Nordlund, wish the project would never happen. At 43 and with cerebral palsy, Nordlund doesn’t want to move from the two-bedroom apartment he has lived in all his life and now shares with his 81-year-old mother, Eleanor.

“I want the city to keep it here,” he said of the apartment where he can gaze out each morning at his mother’s garden. “It’s beautiful,’ he said.

“[If] we get to a new apartment, there won’t be any sunlight,” he said. “There will be dark corridors all the time. . . . We’re going to lose all this.”