LAX Expansion an Election Issue in Airport Area

Were it not for the steady stream of jets roaring in for a landing at Los Angeles International Airport just a block or so to the south, there would be little to distinguish Westchester Village from any other prosperous suburban strip mall.

It has its Starbucks, its Blockbuster, its Ralphs and its Longs Drugs, which, along with a sprinkling of small, locally owned shops and eateries, form a U around a busy parking lot. Since it opened in the mid-1990s, the square along the west side of Sepulveda Boulevard has become a hub of everyday life for the residents of Westchester and of Playa del Rey, its beach-side neighbor to the west.

But unlike most thriving commercial centers, city planners have marked this one for extinction. Under a proposal to expand LAX, the mall would have to make way for a new airport access road. And, as interviews with local visitors to Westchester Village show, there is nothing like a threat to their neighborhood to get people interested in the June 5 mayoral election.

For many, especially those who have lived in the Los Angeles enclaves of Playa del Rey or Westchester for a long time, Issue No. 1 is the airport and its proposed $12-billion expansion. Residents here are keenly aware that the fate of airport expansion, and therefore their communities, rests in large part with the next occupant of the mayor’s office.

Beyond the airport issue, local residents share many of the same general concerns as other Angelenos--traffic, crime (although their residential neighborhoods are among the safest in the city), gasoline prices, and the state of their parks and other public facilities. A few talk about the racial and ethnic changes that are transforming their once predominantly white communities.

But most do not connect these concerns with the mayoral candidates’ platforms, or even with City Hall. When they worry aloud about crime, for example, they do not mention the LAPD, nor do they look to the mayor to ease an affordable-housing crunch.

When it comes to the airport, however, residents here know very well that Mayor Richard Riordan has championed expansion, a highly unpopular cause in the two communities. And they know that the two candidates vying to succeed Riordan--City Atty. James K. Hahn and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa--have signed statements opposing the expansion, which would accommodate another 22 million passengers a year through LAX terminals.

But some, such as Dorothy Nino, are skeptical of promises made in the heat of a campaign.

“They both say they are opposed now, but what will they do when they get in office?” wondered Nino, a volunteer at the Guilded Cage, a gift and greeting-card shop run by the Westchester Mental Health Guild to help provide counseling services to needy families.

A resident of Westchester since 1964, Nino, 67, rattled off a list of airport-related problems--”the noise, the traffic, the pollution,” and laments the prospect of losing another chunk of her community to the proposed expansion.

“It’s a shame to see more of these homes and businesses go,” she said. The parking lot outside the Guilded Cage affords a view of the LAX control tower and of planes swooping down toward the north runway; sometimes the noise is so intense it rattles the shop windows.

Since LAX entered the jet age and began rapidly growing in 1960, some 5,500 homes have been lost--and about 20,000 residents displaced--from Westchester and Playa del Rey, an upscale enclave of expensive houses perched on bluffs overlooking the ocean.

The proposed expansion, which includes new access roads and larger cargo facilities, would wipe out half of Westchester’s business district, including Westchester Village and the stores and restaurants to the south and across Sepulveda. It would swallow two school sites, the Westchester branch library and possibly another 80 homes, according to the office of Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose 6th District includes the airport and the two communities. Galanter opposes LAX expansion and is pushing instead to funnel new passenger and cargo activity to city-owned airports in Palmdale and Ontario.

Another longtime Westchester resident, Carol Dinnewith, 52, said an airport-sponsored soundproofing program made a big difference in the home she has shared with her husband for 20 years.

“The area I live in is real quiet. There are lots of elderly people, and we all know our neighbors,” Dinnewith said as she unloaded bottles and cans at the square’s recycling center. If the airport expansion goes through, Dinnewith said, she will no longer be able to walk to stores, the bank and her part-time receptionist job in an office building just south of Westchester Village.

Some of the newer residents said they aren’t bothered by the airport or the prospect of its expanding.

“I’m not concerned about the airport, not at all,” said Gold Masters, 48, a lecturer on guardian angels and extrasensory perception who moved from the San Fernando Valley to Playa del Rey a few months ago.

Sipping a coffee drink on the patio at Starbucks, Masters said he would like to see the next mayor spend more time at schools talking with students. He expressed no preference in the mayor’s race but offered this prediction: “One of my guardian angels is kind of political, and he told me Villaraigosa’s going to win.”

Other issues preoccupy residents of Westchester and Playa del Rey, where Villaraigosa captured 37% of the primary vote. Almost 21% picked businessman and Riordan favorite Steve Soboroff, while Hahn came in third with 20%.

Bronko Bronza, 74, eating lunch at a picnic table outside Ralphs and reading a local newspaper’s weekly listings of area crime, had residential burglaries on his mind.

“Where are the police when this is going on?” he asked, jabbing a finger at the one-paragraph descriptions of break-ins, car thefts and violent domestic disputes. Like others interviewed, Bronza did not mention the Rampart Division police corruption scandal that originated halfway across the city.

His concerns lay closer to home and, besides crime, ranged from wanting more of the Ballona Wetlands saved in connection with the nearby Playa Vista development to calling for a ban on cell phone use while driving: “People talking on their cell phone in this traffic? Come on!”

But Bronza, like many interviewed, said he did not vote in the primary, although he added that he “moved a lot of people to vote for Hahn.”

Like many other communities in Los Angeles, Westchester and Playa del Rey are undergoing racial and ethnic changes. A decade ago, whites accounted for 70% of the population of the combined communities, according to census data. Today, whites make up 55% of the population, with Latinos representing almost 15%, blacks 14% (up from 7% a decade ago, the biggest gain of any group) and Asians almost 10%.

As co-owner of the busy Head to Toe Salon and a six-year resident of Westchester, Marisa Cardenas, 30, has witnessed some undercurrents of tensions resulting from the changes.

“This is a really nice community, but it’s just one step away from Mayberry,” said Cardenas, referring to the mythical Southern town that was the setting for two popular television sitcoms in the 1960s.

“Acceptance of others is a concern I have,” Cardenas said. When her brother and his wife bought a home in a largely white Westchester neighborhood, Cardenas said, some of their new neighbors, while friendly, asked whether they had ever been in a gang or wondered aloud how the young Latino couple got the money to buy a home here.

“When I buy a house, I think it will be in a more diverse community,” Cardenas said.

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Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.