A Little Patch of Green

There is hardly a place on the planet that hasn’t been a battleground at one time or another, hosting wars based on everything from religion to the territorial imperative.

Humanity will fight at the drop of a hat or a beret or a helmet or a feathered headdress over whose god is best and / or who owns that choice piece of land near the river.

Well, I have a new battleground today. It’s a little patch of green in a corner of the world called Glassell Park, and it has nothing to do with God.

So far it’s only a war of words between neighbors in the hilly community northeast of downtown and a man who wants to build a few houses, but who knows where it might go from here?

I have seen battles over open space escalate from talk to shouts to pickets to parades and even to fistfights during my time of covering the erratic human animal.

In this case, I don’t believe it will turn into a fistfight. Pam Thackery, who is leading the surrounding homeowners, is very determined but not very big. The prospective builder, Simon Simitian, while equally determined, doesn’t seem inclined to punch anyone.

But trust me when I tell you that words are flying like spears in the Battle of Glassell Park.

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I write about this today, not because it’s the most compelling event occurring in L.A., but because it isn’t. I don’t know about you, but I need a break from dirty cops and murdering thugs and endless car chases and stupid politicians and children in pain.

On a level below all of this, or maybe above it, are a hundred little stories that hardly anyone covers, such as the scuffling in Glassell Park. It may be inconsequential in the grand pattern of human survival, but it’s sure shaking them up in the neighborhood by the Glendale Freeway.

The fight actually began three years ago when Pam and Jon Thackery, both in their 40s, were married. Jon, who works in movie special effects, and Pam, who designs ceramics, began looking for a place to live.

They searched for 2 1/2 years before finding the ideal home in Glassell Park. It was a rustic, beamed-ceiling house with a strip of open land in front and a serene view of mountains in the distance.

The Thackerys moved in and soon discovered that the open land in front of them, a sloping stretch dotted with eucalyptus trees, wasn’t going to be open very long.

Simitian had received permits to build on the property and to connect two cul-de-sacs on the street that runs in front of it.

He says he will build three homes but Thackery waves a city map that shows eight housing plots on the property. That’s why she began going door-to-door.

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Land developers are the natural enemies of homeowners, the way gophers are the natural enemies of gardeners. Thackery had no trouble rallying her neighbors against Simitian. There have been meetings, petitions, protests to the city and contacts with those who might buy the land and turn it into a park.

Thackery is determined that no houses will ever be built there.

“When I saw [Simitian] cutting down a mature elm tree I knew there’d be a problem,” she says, seated at a dining room table loaded with maps, petitions and pamphlets. “That’s when I began talking to the neighbors.”

Once rallied, they’ve joined Thackery, an otherwise amiable and soft-spoken woman, in charging that the land is too unstable to build on and that connecting the cul-de-sacs would alter the character of their quiet neighborhood. Thackery adds: “Basically, we’re fighting for a little open space.”

Simitian, who came to this country from Lebanon 13 years ago, says soil tests prove the land is stable and adds, employing a term I am not at liberty to repeat, that if Thackery wants open space she should buy acreage in a remote location and build a house in the middle of it.

“They want green?” he says. “I’ll put in landscaping. That’s green.”

That won’t be green enough for Thackery or others in the neighborhood. They’ll march into hell, if necessary, to stop Simitian. He responds, in so many words, that that’s exactly where they can go.

When the right to build collides with the need for open space, anything can happen. I’m with the neighborhood. We need all the green we can get. Hell is a place where there’s none at all. Just a lot of wailing souls trying to endure eternity on unforgiving concrete.

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.