Library Expansion Will Clean Up Area

For years, Michelle Epstein watched the comings and goings of people living in three rental houses next door to the Sun Valley Library where she is youth librarian.

Hardened drug dealers, prostitutes and brazen gang members occupied the ramshackle houses on Vineland Avenue at Strathern Street, she said, showing little regard for the properties.

So last fall when Los Angeles library officials purchased the property with Proposition DD bond funds earmarked for $178.3-million public library renovation projects, Epstein rejoiced.

“The day they boarded up the houses, I breathed a sigh of relief,” Epstein said. “The neighbors are ecstatic.”

On Thursday, Epstein was among a group of library officials, community activists and neighbors who joined Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla to watch a work crew raze the dilapidated properties.

Even though they learned at the last minute that the scheduled demolition had been put off until Tuesday to allow contractors to remove asbestos and get the city’s final approval to bulldoze the structures, no one appeared bothered by the delay.

“This is a victory,” said Tony Alcala, a literacy advocate from Sun Valley who said neighborhood children would get the most benefit from a renovated library.

“Our kids are our future,” he said. “If we don’t provide for them we will be in trouble as a society.”

Rod Palencia, a banker from neighboring North Hollywood, said he was glad the eyesore would soon be gone. “Overgrown shrubs, weeds, graffiti and bullet holes are all signs of some kind of illicit activity on the property,” he said. “It’s the last thing we want to see next to a place where intellectual nourishment is taking place.”

Padilla said city officials relocated law-abiding residents from the known haven for drug addicts, prostitutes and gang members, removed squatters and boarded up the properties.

Last November, city officials bought the properties with Proposition DD funds as part of a $3-million expansion and renovation project of the Sun Valley Library Branch, said Peter V. Persic, a Los Angeles Public Library spokesman.

Once the buildings are knocked down, construction crews will begin work on a 30-space parking lot and a 7,500-square-foot addition to the existing 5,000-square-foot library, officials said. New amenities will include computers, a multipurpose room and an outdoor terrace.