2 Competing Visions for Silver Lake Property

Developer Dave Tompkins says he isn’t discouraged that Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn is against his plan to build 71 homes on an old Red Car trolley right of way in Silver Lake.

But it was hard for Tompkins to watch Hahn at a recent community meeting, leading the crowd in chants of “Keep the Red Car green!”

“That was a little unfair,” the developer said later, maintaining that the mayor and area Councilman Eric Garcetti haven’t been fully informed about his housing proposal, which includes three acres for green space.

Hahn and Garcetti support an opposing plan sought by a residents group to turn the 10.8-acre parcel two blocks from the Los Angeles River into an urban park that can be part of a growing river-oriented network of open space.

“This isn’t an uphill battle,” said Tompkins, a former city planner in Beverly Hills. “I think that when the public is educated, they’ll see that it’s a good project for Silver Lake by creating new homes.”

The competing visions for the property, commonly referred to as the Corralitas Red Car land, have stirred debate among residents of a neighborhood where some hillside homes have a panoramic view of the site, the river and the Golden State and Glendale freeways.

A group called the Community Residents’ Assn. for Parks, says an urban park, with a walking trail running the length of the property, makes more sense than homes there. “I can’t imagine more residential property placed here in an area that’s already so dense with homes,” Juliett Giordano said. “Parking is incredibly difficult here.”

More than 400 signatures have been collected by the association to support a park governed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. But in Silver Lake, where many are sensitive to environmental issues and concerns, there is some dissent from the popular view that a park is the best use of the land.

Architect Tony Unruh, a resident and one of about 100 who recently signed petitions supporting Tompkins’ project, said new homes would enhance the property, which he says is an eyesore.

“Single-family homes would bring up the values [of existing homes] and, aesthetically, the area would look way better,” he said. “It just looks like a big trash can.”

The clash of ideas is reminiscent of the battles over proposals to turn two parcels near the river in nearby communities into parks.

One site in Chinatown, the so-called Cornfield, was designated by former Mayor Richard Riordan to be an $80-million industrial park.

On the north bank of the river, another City Hall-supported plan to turn a former Union Pacific rail property, dubbed Taylor Yard, into an industrial park was opposed by activists and residents in adjacent Cypress Park.

After lawsuits and community opposition delayed the projects, the developers dropped their proposals, and the owners agreed to sell the land to the state for parks.

Tompkins finds himself spending a lot of time trying to rally converts to his position because of Hahn’s and Garcetti’s opposition.

“I’ve been walking door to door for several weeks, trying to tell folks about what we’re trying to do,” he said at a local coffee shop, pointing to an armful of diagrams and photos of his project.

His plan calls for 31 single-family homes, priced from the mid-$400,000s to more than $500,000, to be built at the north end of the property--near Fletcher and Riverside drives.

On the parcel’s southern end, which faces the Glendale Freeway, Tompkins has proposed building 40 moderately priced duplex units.

In the middle of the narrow plot would be a three-acre park for the new homeowners and others who have lived in the area for years.

The residents group and the conservancy, however, envision an urban park with an enhanced array of natural vegetation, a trail and an information kiosk. The park would provide walkers, joggers and others with easy access to the river, which is just on the other side of the Golden State Freeway.

“I think he does face an uphill battle,” Garcetti said of Tompkins. “The community wants to see a park there. Development is a step backward.”

There’s another similarity between the dispute over the Corralitas property and other recent campaigns for river-related parks.

In the case of the Cornfield and Taylor Yard, the developers rebuffed initial attempts to buy the land for park use. In both cases, activists and residents lobbied the state to buy the parcels, arguing that parkland was more desirable than warehouses.

Eventually, after months of mounting opposition, the developers agreed to sell the land to the state for nearly $60 million.

In this case, the owner of the Silver Lake property, Liza E. Torkan, isn’t interested in selling the parcel to the conservancy, which says it has $540,000 in state and county park funds available to buy it.

Several attempts in recent years to purchase the land for a park have fallen through--partly, some say, because previous owners wanted too much for the parcel. Torkan, a Los Angeles businesswoman who took on investors to acquire the property, bought it last year for $300,000.

Before World War II, the site was an important right of way for Red Car trolleys, connecting downtown Los Angeles with Glendale and other outlying communities.

In 1955, the land was abandoned, when the Pacific Electric inter-urban streetcars stopped running. The remnants of the bridge that carried the streetcars over Fletcher Drive, at Riverside Drive, are still visible near the property.

Neighbors say the land is being used as a place to dump trash, drink booze, scrawl graffiti and other illegal activities.

On two occasions since 1989, various owners of the property have tried to build homes on the parcel. A plan for 25 homes was approved in 1989, but the permit to build lapsed. Another plan fell through in the late 1990s.

Some say Tompkins’ proposal may be the last best chance to do something meaningful with the Corralitas property.

“I’m not persuaded” by the arguments of park proponents, said Wendy Lusby, who has lived in Silver Lake for 26 years. “How far are we from Griffith Park? Silver Lake [reservoir]?”

Resident Diane Edwardson counters, “I believe the whole city needs new housing. But this is one of the densest [populated] communities in the city. We cannot handle the type of density that [Tompkins] is proposing.”