Category: Van Nuys and the Valley

Option A: Just Plain Places

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This blog has written 13 other times on “Option A”, a Metro LA proposal by the public transportation agency to wipe out 33 acres of industry in Van Nuys, near the junction of Oxnard and Kester, and replace it with a light rail service yard. It would destroy 1,000 jobs, displace 186 businesses and flatten 58 buildings.

Though the scheme has been public knowledge since September 2017, property owners, workers, renters and the neighbors near here still stand on thin ice, awaiting official June 2018 word whether this whole district is sentenced to death, or if another site (B, C, or D), near the Metrolink tracks up on Raymer Street will be chosen instead.

A photo walk around here yesterday, along Oxnard, Aetna, Bessemer and Calvert, to document some buildings that may be gone in a few years, was also an opportunity to show that this area has great potential beyond its current light industrial use.

In gravel yards, on cracked and broken asphalt, under decaying wood, on treeless, depopulated and narrow roads, there are ingredients for a nice urban area of some new housing, some new cafes, some places where trees, lighting, discreet signage and pavement of cobblestones could bring an infusion of 24/7, urban, walkable, bikeable activity to the neighborhood.

It is already an incubator of creativity with makers of exquisite decorative hardware, superb custom cabinetry, music recording studios, Vespa and Mustang restorers, stained glass makers, welders, boat builders, and kitchen designers. These businesses, incidentally, are staffed by mostly local owners and workers, many of whom are but minutes away, or take the bus or even walk to work.  Rents are currently affordable, often 50 cents, $1 or $2 a square foot.

MacLeod Ale, maker of fine British style beers, since 2014, is on the north side of Calvert and is not threatened with demolition but its existence and success is a testament to the potential for innovation in this area.

Ironically, the very wonderful addition of a landscaped bike path and the Metro Orange Line bus in 2005 is now threatening the area because of future conversion to a light rail system. Yet the “Option A” district is thriving, even if it is shabby in places, because it is a work zone of skilled, employed, productive people.

Politicians who often talk ad nauseum about “diversity”  should come here with mouths closed and observe men and women: Mexican, Armenian, Norwegian, German, Persian, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Irish, Scottish, Israeli-Americans, all the hyphenations of ethnicity and gender, who don’t care about where anyone came from, but only about where they are going in life.

This is Los Angeles. This is diversity. This is economic prosperity. This is within walking distance of “downtown Van Nuys.”

Yet short-sighted officials, bureaucratic ignoramuses with grandiose titles, flush with public money, would consider wiping out the very type of neighborhood whose qualities are needed, wanted and venerated.

Option A must not happen. This is what it looks like now.

Imagine what it could look like with the right, guiding hands of investment, preservation, planning and protection.

 

 

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Walkable Places You Drive By.

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On the east side of Van Nuys Boulevard, south of Oxnard, there is a conglomeration of small shops.

Signs advertise a Kirby Vacuum shop, Attorney Sandra Nutt, a Farmers Insurance office, PC Tech Computer Repair, Young Actors Space, and a Los Angeles Wedding Chapel. Angeleno Mortuary and Benjamin Moore Catalina Paint fill up the northern most two blocks.

Here you buy cleaning machines, you get legal counsel, you are taught acting, you are legally married, you are fixing your computer, you are buying paint, you are purchasing life insurance, and you are dead and interred.

All this small business activity takes place in little shops constructed in the 1940s when commercial Van Nuys barely stretched south of Oxnard.

 

To the east of this is a pleasant, shady neighborhood of single- family houses mixed together with multi-family properties, mostly well-kept. Tiara, Califa, Tyrone and Sylmar are interesting to walk down because they contain an ecosystem of housing that works well together, near public transportation, modest and neat.

And if you are wondering what to call this area, please address it properly as “Sherman Oaks” even thought it abuts downtown Van Nuys.

You get your smog check in Van Nuys. You rent or own in Sherman Oaks.

At Calhoun and Tiara, a three-story apartment is under construction. Humorously, I observe that the style recalls those jutting out, trapezoids on steroids style popular 15 years ago in Santa Monica. The Valley is always behind….. architecturally.

There are vividly painted buildings on Calhoun, including a bright red box unit, and a 1920s house in school bus yellow at 14300 Califa. People will do daring things only when they see their neighbors do them.

The eccentric hues cheer up the area, bringing energy to a place where the beiges and grays cover everything else.

At Califa and Sylmar there is a property with dark green dwarf palms growing in profusion along the walkway and the front yard. They are a bold alternative to grass and liven up the house, along with a muted green fence built of wood and wire. This arrangement of plants discourages parking, and provides a sharp, prickly security perimeter, a subliminal deterrent, but naturalistic.

 

On the west side of Sylmar, are newer (2014), two-story dense houses packed together, a chorus line of garagettes. The builder pastiched shutters, vinyl windows, tile roofs, and various desert colors to evoke a Californian aura, Montecito Mansion by Home Depot. The houses sold for about $800,000 each.

With a down payment of $157,000, a mortgage for a family of four would be about $3,100 a month.

This area, newly christened as Sherman Oaks, still within paint fume reach of the auto body shops along Oxnard, is a desirable place in a city starved for “affordable” housing.

At 14403 Tiara, townhouses with three bedrooms and three baths will soon be available for $659,000 each. With rows of garage doors, it is unlikely that any of the folks living here will hang out on the front porch drinking lemonade.

The tour ends BEHIND the shops on Van Nuys Boulevard where an old house stands marooned in a sea of asphalt and parking.

Forensically, curiously, I wonder what this was so many years ago? Was this building a little cottage in a sea of orange groves, set back from the road before they filled in the frontage with the commercial buildings? Someone was surviving, living, eking it out 80 or 90 years ago. Then the land, I guess, was subdivided and “improved”.

 

A clever, innovative city would allow this back area to be turned into a garden apartment area. The shops could be built with apartments above, and the windows could face in back around a central courtyard planted with lemon, orange and walnut trees. They might build a few more small houses here, and devise a protected, nurturing development on this site.

The cynic in me doubts it will happen. But the optimist in me knows it is possible.

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Option A: What the Neighbors Think.

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A light rail service yard in Washington state.

Metro is planning a light rail train down the center of Van Nuys Bl. extending from Pacoima to Van Nuys, stopping at Oxnard St. Less probable is a dedicated bus line.

Their final decision, as to what type of transport to build (bus or train) and where to service these will come in June 2018.

Four areas in Van Nuys are under consideration for eminent domain demolition and the building of a light rail maintenance yard.

These are called the “Option” areas and they are A, B, C, and D.

Options B, C, and D

B, C, and D all straddle the existing Metrolink heavy passenger rail tracks along Raymer St. near the former GM plant on the Van Nuys/Panorama City border.

OPTION A:

Option A

Only “Option A” is located in another area: this is a 33-acre spread of light industry comprising 186 businesses, 58 structures and as many as 1,000 workers who are located NE of Oxnard and Kester along Oxnard, Aetna, Bessemer and Calvert Streets.

This blog has reported extensively, since September 2017, on the “Option A” community: a unique, productive, and innovative group of entrepreneurs who make fine decorative hardware, custom shelving; record music, weld metals, clean carpets, fashion artistic stained glass, and restore vintage Mustangs, Vespas and large yachts.

Skilled craftsman at Pashupatina
Garrett Marks, CEO, Mustangs, Etc. (est. 1967)
Peter Scholz, owner Showcase Cabinets (est. 1987)
Simon Simonian, Progressive Art Stained Glass Studio
Kristian Storli, Owner: Bar Italia Vespa
Steve Muradyan of BPM Custom Marine

They employ local workers, many of whom walk to work. There are immigrants here, but there are also people who started companies 30, 40 and even 50 years ago who would be forced to move from their little supportive community and fight to rent new space competing against cash rich marijuana growers who are swallowing up space for their noxious, lethargy inducing, industrial scale weed.

I was curious what residents in the area think of “Option A” so I went online and visited Next Door.

My Next Door app page has 2,000 community members from Burbank Bl. north to Roscoe, from the 405 to Hazeline.

 

I posted a question asking if people opposed or supported “Option A.” Overwhelmingly, by a vote of 87% to 13 (94 total votes), they said they were against it.

 

Peter Scholz and employee at Showcase Cabinets

 

 Here are some of the comments:

“It seems like a giant repair yard would be an eye sore and would attract litter, homeless encampments and shady activities since it will have very little activity especially at night. I don’t see how that is worth uprooting all these businesses who contribute to our community and have been here for all of these years.”

“I prefer local businesses any day. Plus, with numerous new apartment buildings popping up all around the area, we have potential for more retail/cafes to move in to the buildings up for lease. However, if all of that space gets used up by ugly rail yards, then the Van Nuys economy will never thrive to its full potential. I’m sick of this city being treated as a dumping ground.”

“The downside of Option A is not only a large rail yard in main area of Van Nuys (which MTA promises would be modern and attractive) but as well, that it would take out approximately 200 small and thriving Van Nuys businesses that each employ, one, two, three, five or more employees, whereas the other two main options hold a minuscule number of businesses. Eminent domain [against] all these businesses in the heart of VN would hurt us in several ways, besides uprooting the businesses and the citizens who work there, there are limited number of commercial properties currently available close by, so many of the businesses could not relocate close by, would not be able to keep locale clientele. For many who live nearby, if new properties could be found, commutes would be added. And for all those businesses relocating outside our community, or for those that would simply be forced to fold, Van Nuys would lose a healthy business tax base. Again, the other two options provided by the city for the yard (if needed based on what the final decisions are) do not suffer from anywhere near the same extent of overall downside.”

“I own a house on Hatteras near the Option A area. And I also rent a building on Aetna which would be demolished. If this happens I will sell my house, which I just purchased two years ago and I will move out of Los Angeles. There is not a reason in the world to pick our district for demolition when so many jobs and lives are at stake. If Nury Martinez allows this she should be recalled.”

Clearly, people who live near the Option A zone are insightful and understand how important it is to preserve small business in Van Nuys. They know that an enormous, gaping hole would not revitalize Van Nuys, but further degrade it.

 

The community residents, as well as the businesses near Kester and Oxnard, are united in opposing the destruction of viable businesses and local jobs.

A Stark Place.

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The center of Van Nuys is the Civic Center. The raison d’etre of this pedestrian mall: nobody comes here unless they are forced to.

Here is where you come to file small claims, to appear before a judge, to file plans for a room addition, to borrow a book, to speak to your Councilwoman, to talk to a cop, to ask for an extension of probation.

You can also push your shopping cart full of belongings here, plop on a bench, open a bottle of vodka and drink yourself silly without interference. There are guards, guns, and security cameras, but they are aimed at the general public, not intoxicated people covered in four weeks of dirt.

There is one glorious structure, built in 1933, the Valley Municipal Building. And then there is everything around it, including the “new” library (1964), the “new” LAPD (1965), the Marvin Braude Center (1994), the Van Nuys Courthouse East (1965), the Van Nuys Courthouse West (1990), the James C Corman Federal Building (1973) and the double decker County Parking Facility at 6170 Sylmar Ave. an $850,000 symphony of concrete opened in 1968. Also vast and comprehensive: the LAPD Motor Transport Facility at 6170 Tyrone Ave. where cop cars are prettied up behind fences.

If you want to register a new business you can come to the Los Angeles County Registrar at 14340 Sylvan St. and make your way past half a dozen aggressive hucksters passing out business cards in which they offer, for a fee, to transact your business for you.

If Van Nuys were a 1962 film by Michaelangelo Antonioni, its stark, barren, nuclear winter surroundings would make for an immensely powerful setting showing the alienation of man from urban environment.

There is so much concrete here, the place is awash in it. It is sculptured, sliced, stacked, plated, affixed, drilled, and molded into so many walls, sidewalks, plazas, and decorative designs. Never before and not since 1964-70, has concrete been so worshipped, so valued, so esteemed, not just for freeways but for art itself.

Come here if you can, just to see the concrete.

The empty post office.

Where Have You Gone?

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Vernon Merritt III/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Where have you gone
The girl who passed by
Where have you gone?
I think of you all the time

She walked along the road,
50 years ago

I was a boy,
inside a shop,
looking out a window,
at her.

It was spring
I think
The sun was still faint
I remember
The breeze brought a chill
But not for you
Life was about to begin
For me

Where have you gone
The girl that I knew?
Where have you gone?
The seasons and dreams?

Her hair was blonde
and blew in the wind
She was young
And free
And alive
And unreal

She was a vision
I still hold
An ideal
Kept fresh
In my heart

Her legs were long,
her skirt was short,
she went past me and smiled,
I ran outside

But she was gone
only the scent of roses remained
the scent she wore
it soon went away

So where have you gone?
The girl who passed by
You were to me
the essence of free
you were the girl
I wanted to see
you were the one,
Where have you gone?

Tell me please.
If you know.
Where have you gone?

-Andrew B. Hurvitz

Poème en français
Où es tu allé
La fille qui est passée
Où es tu allé?
je pense à toi tout le temps


Elle a marché le long de la route,
il y a 50 ans

J'étais un garçon,
à l'intérieur d'un magasin,
regardant par la fenêtre,
chez elle.

C'était le printemps
je pense
Le soleil était encore faible
Je me souviens
La brise a apporté un froid
Mais pas pour toi
La vie allait commencer
Pour moi

Où es tu allé
La fille que je connaissais?
Où es tu allé?
Les saisons et les rêves?

Ses cheveux étaient blonds
et soufflé dans le vent
Elle était jeune
Et libre
Et vivant
Et irréel

Elle était une vision
Je tiens toujours
Un idéal
Conservé frais
Dans mon coeur

Ses jambes étaient longues,
sa jupe était courte,
elle est passée devant moi et a souri,
J'ai couru dehors

Mais elle était partie
seul le parfum des roses est resté
l'odeur qu'elle portait
il est bientôt parti

Alors où es-tu parti?
La fille qui est passée
Tu étais pour moi
l'essence de libre
tu étais la fille
je voulais voir
Vous étiez le seul,
Où es tu allé?

Dis-moi s'il te plaît.
Si tu sais.
Où es tu allé?


¿Dónde has ido?

Dónde has ido
La chica que pasó por
¿Dónde has ido?
pienso en ti todo el tiempo

Ella caminó a lo largo del camino,
Hace 50 años

Yo era un chico,
dentro de una tienda,
mirando por una ventana,
a ella.

Era primavera
creo
El sol todavía estaba débil
recuerdo
La brisa trajo un escalofrío
Pero no para ti
La vida estaba por comenzar
Para mi

Dónde has ido
La chica que yo conocía?
¿Dónde has ido?
Las estaciones y los sueños?

Su cabello era rubio
y sopló en el viento
Ella era joven
Y gratis
Y vivo
E irreal

Ella era una visión
Todavía sostengo
Un ideal
Mantenido fresco
En mi corazón

Sus piernas eran largas,
su falda era corta,
ella pasó junto a mí y sonrió,
Corrí afuera

Pero ella se había ido
solo el aroma de rosas permaneció
el aroma que ella usaba
pronto se fue

Entonces, ¿dónde has ido?
La chica que pasó por
Tú eras para mí
la esencia de la libertad
tú eras la niña
quería ver
Tú eras el único
¿Dónde has ido?

Dime por favor.
Si usted sabe.
¿Dónde has ido?

Random Observations.

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The early March air smelled quite frequently of jasmine yesterday.

The skies were cloudier, anticipating and foreshadowing the slowest, rarest event that mercurial, moody nature ever delivers to Los Angeles: rain. We want it so badly that when it comes we regret it, like so much else in life.

I walked east along Victory and stopped at 14619, where a two-story building, housing VIP Printing, caught my eye.

Built in 1960, it’s a box with a second floor of louvered windows and panels, alternating. The first floor has shops under a protruding horizontal overhang. Except for the ugly signs marring the façade, it has a plain purity and deserves better treatment.

On the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard and Victory, the symbol of Van Nuys: an overflowing trashcan.

Also at that intersection: decrepit one-story buildings.

In a finer city, these prominent parcels might be five, six, seven, or eight stories tall and contain many apartments on each corner. This is Van Nuys, stuck in 1966, perpetuating wasteful land use, wasted because housing is desperately needed. We need one less pawnshop and 500,000 more apartments.

The Q Bargain Store at 6351 Van Nuys Bl. was built as Sontag Drugstore in the 1940s. It still has the streamlined look of its youth. Like all of Van Nuys Boulevard north of Oxnard, it got old, it got poor, and we all got fucked.

Norvald Bldg, 1940, 1953, 2018.

Deformed beyond belief is the decapitated 6314 Van Nuys Boulevard, which in its decorative heyday was called the Norvald Building. Prominent people and institutions:  realtor/developer Harry Bevis, Bank of America and DWP were tenants in the 1940s and 50s. A 1953 photograph shows Van Nuys Stationery store, Whelan Drugs and Bill Kemp Sportswear for Men.

Van Nuys, it is not fiction to say, once had businesses supported by letter writers and men who wore well-tailored sportswear.  They used the word “amazing” a few times a year to describe space travel, or volcanic eruptions, never as an adjective for avocado toast or their little dog Zoe.

Diagonal parking was available along with a streetcar running down Van Nuys Boulevard. Imagine that!

The Country General Store at 6279 Van Nuys Blvd is a very fine country/western clothing store with a large selection of boots, ornate belts, and men’s Western hats, jeans, and sport shirts.

Unfortunately, the façade is cheap vinyl and fakery, obscuring a neo-classical California Bank that once anchored this corner with respectable, solid architectural forms and operable windows. A decorative clock and a traffic light with moving Stop/Go arms embellished and celebrated an urbane, safe, and tidy young town.

The future, seen through the past, is waiting for its revival. We send our thoughts and prayers to Van Nuys, a critically ill patient wounded by fatal liberalism and self-destructive policies.