Neighborhood seeks a true ‘living street’
OCEAN PARK First it was prostitution and drug dealing, then the unendurable buzzing of idling tow trucks. Now residents living in a small alley-like street near the Venice border say they want to take their neighborhood back.
Residents of Longfellow Street have long complained about the quality of life issues that come with living on a small corridor often mistaken for an alley, its sidewalk-less design an attraction for speeding motorists, illicit activity, and an invitation for the automotive-related businesses on Lincoln Boulevard to use it as temporary storage.
These issues are often attributed to the design of the small street, which is located one block west of Lincoln between Marine and Ozone streets. Residents often point to the rough asphalt, lack of sidewalks — which leads to a disorganized appearance when cars park along the side — as troubling signs.
“It’s legally and officially a street, but people treat it more like an alley,” Steve Waskow, who lives a block west of Longfellow, said on Monday. “There are no sidewalks, parking is dismal and there are no trees to speak of.”
The Borderline Neighborhood Group, a nearly 20-year-old organization which represents a small nine-block patch within Ocean Park, is hoping City Hall will be able to allocate more than $4.5 million in its next budget to transform Longfellow into a “living street,” a street design concept in which automotive needs are secondary to pedestrians and residents.
Residents reviewed the preliminary sketches on two design options for Longfellow during a community workshop on Monday. The plans, presented by city consultants Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates and landscaping firm Van Atta Associates, illustrated two different configurations for Longfellow, but both designed with trees and traffic calming measures.
The workshop was held nearly a year after residents first met with the consultants — hired by City Hall for the project — to voice their vision for Longfellow, which included retaining the current parking space inventory, mitigating commercial traffic and having a “living street” with sustainable designs.
The consultants played around with different options since the meeting last summer, including adding diagonal parking, an idea nixed because it would’ve eaten up too much roadway and created accessibility problems for emergency vehicles, according to Jessica ter Schure, a senior associate with Nelson/Nygaard.
What the consultants returned with was two different options for Longfellow, the key differences between them being a dedicated pedestrian zone in the first proposal and a shared walkway in the second proposal.
The shared walkway would be used by both pedestrians and drivers, who would be encouraged to travel slowly on the street because of traffic calming measures, such as a narrower thoroughfare caused by tree plantings. The consultant is also proposing to elevate all of Longfellow a few inches above adjacent streets, giving it more of a distinctive identity.
“A great neighborhood place to WALK to!”
“You would really have a sense of entry into your neighborhood,” Susan Van Atta, president of Van Atta Associates, said during the meeting. “This isn’t the kind of street where you will pick up full speed.”
The project is estimated to cost around $4.5 million, which includes relocating the utility lines underground. City staff is asking for funding in the upcoming fiscal year.
The City Council could hear on the project at a meeting in June.
Most members in the Borderline Neighborhood Group leaned in favor of the option with the shared walkway, a feature residents said they had been seeking since the project was first conceptually launched. The proposal would allow the most effective changes while keeping certain favorable elements of the street intact, most notably being the ability to walk straight down the middle of the street.
“We want to reclaim it,” Dennis Woods, who has lived on Navy Street and Longfellow for 10 years, said following the workshop on Monday. “The new concept is an incredible solution to a myriad of problems.”
Those problems include prostitution and drug transactions before street lights were installed a few years ago, Woods said. Other residents point to other nuisances including automotive businesses on Lincoln using the street to store cars.
Woods, a 10-year-member of the Borderline Neighborhood Group, is the chairman of its improvement committee, which is tasked with overseeing projects including the “living street” on Longfellow.
The little-known organization represents residents living between Marine and Ozone to the north and south, with Lincoln to the east and Highland Avenue to the west.
The Borderline Neighborhood Group is a separate entity from the Ocean Park Association, though their memberships do overlap, the former with more than 150 residents. Unlike organizations such as OPA, the Borderline group is not formally recognized by City Hall, mainly because it is not an established non-profit organization, one of the qualifications necessary to receive city grant funding.
“It gives us a sense of community,” Woods said. “We have great neighbors and we’ve created a livable place.”
The group is currently chaired by Sharon Carothers, a Highland Avenue resident who moved into the neighborhood a few years ago and hosts many of the meetings and functions.
“It is truly a neighborhood,” Carothers said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 30, 2008. Read the original PDF.