Merchants Attack Plan to Take Over Parking Lot

In Echo Park, the merchants say, businesses along Sunset Boulevard depend on shoppers who can find a place to park their cars. That’s especially true on weekends, when large numbers of shoppers, visitors and churchgoers converge on the area.

“If you can’t find a place to park, you won’t stick around,” said Bonnie Scanlan, president of the Echo Park Chamber of Commerce. “You’re outta there.”

Thus, merchants along the area’s main business district are up in arms over a proposal pushed by Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg to turn an 80-space city parking lot over to a nonprofit social service agency for a community center providing youth activities and other services.

The parking lot would be used for basketball, volleyball and handball courts, picnic benches and other recreational facilities.

Opponents admit that an expansion of El Centro del Pueblo, established in 1970 to combat area gangs, is needed. But they say there must be a better solution than plowing under the parking lot, south of Sunset on Lemoyne Street.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can never have enough youth activities,” said Mike Leum, whose family has operated Pioneer Market in Echo Park for 35 years. “But the bottom line is, which people refuse to acknowledge: The community will live or die by its business district.”

Goldberg, for one, thinks the opponents are wrong about the parking. He contends that Department of Transportation studies suggest that three municipal parking lots serving Echo Park’s business district with more than 200 spaces are underutilized.

Some say the concern over parking is a ploy to disguise the merchants’ real concern that the expansion might attract gang members and other troublemakers. “Until now, we’ve never had a whole lot of opposition,” said El Centro Executive Director Sandra Figueroa-Villa. “The expansion is good, not only for the families who come here for service, but for everybody in Echo Park.”

Merchants told The Times they were not concerned about the people who will gather at El Centro. But they have said they have heard such complaints from Echo Park residents.

Of particular concern to opponents is the abrupt and speedy manner in which Goldberg, who represents Echo Park, is pushing the proposal.

News that the lot would be used for El Centro’s expansion spread last month when merchants noticed that work on parking lot improvements had stopped without explanation. Leum called Goldberg’s office and eventually was told the El Centro expansion would take up the parking lot.

“That’s our tax dollars at work?” Leum remembers asking.

Goldberg makes no apologies for the speed with which the project is proceeding. She explains that $1.3 million in funds from Proposition K--a bond issue passed in 1996 for park facilities--will be lost if the parking lot is not secured by the end of this month.

The project, expected to cost $4 million, has been kicking around for nearly three years since Mayor Richard Riordan announced the creation of his Targeted Neighborhoods Initiative to provide funds to spruce up needy communities. At a community meeting 2 1/2 years ago, there was overwhelming support from residents and merchants for a community center and steps were taken to get initiative funding.

An estimated $100,000 was obtained from the neighborhood initiative, but the prolonged search for a suitable location was unsuccessful. The owner of one building, Goldberg said, recently refused to sell it to provide a home for the expansion.

“We’ve been working for months on this” without success, Goldberg said, adding that the parking lot turned out to be the best alternative.

A suggestion by Leum--building a parking structure on the lot and dedicating its top floor for El Centro sports activities--has been rejected by Goldberg, who said: “There’s no source of funding for it.”

One Echo Park institution interested in the controversy, as a neutral observer, is the Angelus Temple, the headquarters church for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1927. Its members use the surrounding parking lots for Sunday morning services.

Dave Wood, the church’s property manager, said it could become a financial partner in a plan to build a parking structure. “The church would be willing to enter into some kind of a venture that solves the parking problem,” Wood said, noting that it is still too early to tell if there is interest.

Meanwhile, a community meeting is scheduled for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Logan Street Elementary School to consider the El Centro proposal.