1979 – Here in Van Nuys

43 years ago the situation of the Van Nuys Business District was quite abysmal. The good shops had closed down and the street was full of bail bonds and pawn shops. Merchants complained about street racing, and the negative affects of parking meters which discouraged shoppers from spending more time in stores.

On Wednesday nights the street came alive as thousands converged to watch cruise nights. But the crowds blocked streets and left behind trash. The businesses didn’t like it.

In 1977, “Vitalize Van Nuys” began, a privately financed, community-based redevelopment organization. It sought to revitalize businesses, generate more employment and upgrade the surrounding residential community.

34-year-old Bruce Ackerman operated the Greater Van Nuys Chamber of Commerce after working with the San Fernando Chamber of Commerce. He promoted a resurgence of retail.

“Van Nuys really hit rock bottom in 1977,” recalled Dick Lithgow of Agency Insurance.

There were 23 massage parlors back then.

Hopeful signs in 1979 included a $14 million dollar government complex with new courthouses, post office and police station. There were also new studies forecasting “a tremendous demand for office space in Van Nuys.”

Legitimate businesses such as Nahas Department Store complained that vagrants harassed customers in the parking lot.

Owner Richard Smith said the neighborhood was increasingly elderly and Hispanic. “We were concerned with the growth of the barrio around 1975-76, but that has not caused any problems for us,” he said.

Another positive sign for Van Nuys in 1979 was the 100 businesses that had spent more than $4 million dollars ($4,000 per business) upgrading their properties.

In 2022, it is hard to imagine the challenges Van Nuys faced in 1979.

Fortunately, those far sighted visionaries gave us a truly spectacular urban boulevard we can all be proud of: clean, safe, thriving, walkable, architecturally magnificent, the jewel of the San Fernando Valley.

Thank you especially goes to Councilwoman Nury Martinez and Mayor Eric Garcetti for their leadership!

As reported by Curbed Los Angeles and other outlets, a 1979 building, designed by John Lautner, is scheduled for demolition.

The Crippled Children’s Society Rehabilitation Center at 6530 Winnetka Ave in Woodland Hills currently works as a center where developmentally disabled persons are assisted in finding work.

But the building is small (11,214sf), irregularly sited, surrounded by open parks and parking lots, and the land it occupies is large (130,926 SF). It commits a sin of not using every square inch of land for profit and therefore has endangered its existence.

A Senior Housing unit will replace it, most likely one run for profit.

My friend Aydin, who lives nearby, brought me there last night.

In the waning light of day, the strange and introverted building, sliced and angled, with a pie shaped courtyard and concrete amoeba benches, presented itself as liberal, caring, and vulnerable.

Under a shaded steel canopy: rows of empty lunch benches and two plastic chairs.

At the entrance to the building, a concrete wall supported a tent pole, marking the structure with some evidence of the powers who created it. It looked like it was added after 1979, sometime in the Reagan Era, when enterprises such as this one began to seem frivolous, and everything began to be ordered and valued in terms of its monetary importance.

What was in the mind of the architect who made this strange building for the disabled now on Death Row? In its composition of contorted shapes and ungraceful lines it seems to go nowhere. But its mission, to educate and train disabled people, succeeds in strange dignity.

Tag: 1979

Van Nuys Business District Struggles Against Decay: 12 23 1979

Impending Demolition.

Share this:

Share this: