Book Drafted in Fight to Preserve Chase Knolls

Is Southland mystery novelist Faye Kellerman’s book “False Prophet” prophetic?

Some residents of the Chase Knolls Apartments in Sherman Oaks, who are fighting to preserve their 1949 complex from demolition, think so.

In her novel, Kellerman offered an idyllic description of a block-long apartment complex at the “corner of Fulton [Avenue] and Riverside [Drive]” that was “planted with rolling lawns and trees.”

One character later calls it “a real anachronism” and marvels, “I don’t know who owns all this land, but they’re sitting on a gold mine. Maybe someone feels preservation of people is more important than another office building.”

Residents of Chase Knolls, at 13459 Riverside Drive, discovered the book and used it Wednesday in their campaign to save the apartments. Residents read excerpts at a meeting of the Cultural Heritage Commission during a hearing on whether to declare the apartment complex a Historical-Cultural Monument.

The panel sent the issue to the City Council without a recommendation.

Sandy Roberts said she contacted Kellerman, who confirmed that Chase Knolls was the complex she was describing. The author said she lived for a time on Varna Avenue near the apartments, Roberts said.

The novelist offered to lend her name to any campaign to save the buildings, Roberts said.

BY THE NUMBERS: Rep. James Rogan of Glendale has opened a new line of attack on his Democratic rival, Adam Schiff of Burbank, accusing him of pushing an “extreme agenda” on illegal immigrants and bilingual education.

The Republican incumbent’s new cable television commercial criticizes Schiff for opposing Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that sought to deny educational and medical benefits to illegal immigrants.

It also says Schiff “voted to weaken the law that ended bilingual education,” a reference to the 1998 initiative, Proposition 227, designed to dismantle bilingual education.

The commercial prompted a harsh rebuttal from Schiff’s political consultant, Parke Skelton.

“It’s 1994 all over again, and Jim Rogan is reprising the racially divisive wedge politics of Republicans in elections gone by,” Skelton said.

“I thought there was a general consensus that they’d made a horrible mistake when they’d decided to hitch their wagon to that star, but I guess Jim Rogan was out of the room when that consensus was reached.”

Rogan campaign manager Jason Roe said the commercial was simply “drawing some distinctions” between the candidates. Both of the controversial ballot initiatives “passed with overwhelming popular support” in the district, and the ad has “nothing to do with race,” he said.

“Will it help us with Republicans? Yes. Will it help us with Democrats? Yes. Will it help us with independents? Yes.”

To independent analysts, the ad reflected an effort by Rogan to consolidate his base of support among white conservatives. The portion of registered Republicans in the district has dropped to 37% in recent years amid an influx of Latinos, Asian Americans and Armenian Americans.

“That’s to mobilize the Republican base, clearly,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at Claremont Graduate University. “That is not going to help him among Democrats or Latinos.”

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GAVEL TO GAVEL: Councilman Alex Padilla may think the rancorous debate over proposed redevelopment in his district will grow quiet since a citizens panel on the issue voted to disband, but history indicates otherwise.

Twice in the past, council members have tried to disband or replace elected Project Area Committees, only to find the level of criticism and opposition to their plans had grown.

“Every time a politician tried to quash a PAC, it has exploded in the politician’s face,” said John Walsh, chairman of the Hollywood Project Area Committee.

Walsh should know.

The City Council created the Hollywood PAC in 1983, but the council voted in 1989 to cut off funding and name a new advisory panel to replace it. Then-Councilman Mike Woo, who was a strong proponent of redevelopment of Hollywood, said the panel had been abolished because it had become a forum for “wacky behavior” that was determined to derail redevelopment.

But the group has continued meeting and recently celebrated its “11th year of derecognition.”

Even without official city sanction, the Hollywood Project Area Committee has remained a thorn in the side of city officials, holding well-attended monthly meetings to sound off on redevelopment projects and issuing statements criticizing the city for actions the panel believes are improper.

This month’s agenda included a motion to condemn City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg for “the worst job of Hollywood Boulevard tree trimming in decades.” Another motion would offer support to a “Anybody but Woo for City Council Committee.”

Council President John Ferraro had a similar lack of success in 1992 when he engineered council action to disband the PAC overseeing redevelopment in North Hollywood, which had become dominated by critics of redevelopment.

Mildred Weller was chairwoman of the committee at the time, and remembered when Ferraro sent an aide with a gavel to the meeting after the council vote.

A friend gave Weller a larger-than-normal-sized gavel, and she pounded it furiously until the Ferraro aide left the meeting in tears, Weller recalled.

“I pounded this gavel on the table and I said, ‘I am the chair and you are not taking over,’ ” Weller said.

Rather than challenge the council action in court, the reinvigorated redevelopment opponents ran in a new election and recaptured the PAC.

To this day, the North Hollywood PAC remains a steady and harsh critic of the Community Redevelopment Agency and a thorn in Ferraro’s side.

Walsh and Weller predicted the same for the northeast Valley PAC that Padilla is moving to disband.

“He is turning everybody on that PAC into a martyr,” Walsh said. “They will continue to be heard.”

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POSTER BOY: Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) has posted on the wall of his Sacramento office the searing photograph of federal agents seizing the distraught 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the house of his Miami relatives.

McClintock said he was “dismayed and disgusted” by the Clinton administration’s handling of the case, so he posted the photograph to display the “awesome” power of government by force.

“I felt it was a tragic example of a government placing itself above the law,” McClintock said. “It’s important that we constantly remind ourselves that government is, by its very nature, force, and that every law that is passed ultimately ends up at the barrel of a gun.”

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BEDFELLOWS: Republican Paul Zee of South Pasadena, a Rogan ally running for Schiff’s seat in the state Senate, will trek to Sacramento on Monday to urge lawmakers to pass a bill sponsored by, of all people, Schiff.

Zee will testify in favor of a Schiff bill that would restore South Pasadena’s right to negotiate with the state on the proposed extension of the 710 Freeway through Pasadena and South Pasadena.

A 1994 law yanked from South Pasadena its right to play a role in planning for the freeway. Zee, a South Pasadena councilman, opposes the freeway extension.

“This bill is going to help preserve the neighborhoods of Pasadena and South Pasadena,” said Zee campaign manager Vivan Noh. “Whether it’s a Democrat- or Republican-sponsored bill is not an issue.”

The bill’s others supporters include, of all people, Rogan.

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IT’S THE WATER: Maybe it was the water, but Monday’s City Council Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee meeting took on the flavor of a Southern revival church service.

David Freeman, the Department of Water and Power’s general manager, must have felt like he had to atone for his department’s sins, though he wasn’t head of the DWP when it first proposed a reclamation project to convert sewage into drinking water.

When one Valley resident accused Freeman of being “The Pied Piper of the DWP” with the reclamation project, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas intoned in his deep, ministerial voice, “You said he was the sinner?”

Later, after Councilman Joel Wachs demanded the public hear more than just the DWP’s story, Freeman replied in his Southern drawl, “I didn’t say I was going to be the preacher man.”

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Times staff writers Patrick McGreevy, Michael Finnegan, Annette Kondo and Julie Tamaki contributed to this column.