Setback for Los Angeles warehouse project made Lincoln Heights a stronger community

 

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A small victory in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles may not seem like much from the outside — and it may prove temporary. But this recent development so far has affirmed a sense of balance in the city’s priorities and supplied evidence that even as LA concentrates on homelessness and housing, it can tackle other questions, too.

The feud is over a plot of land wedged between a set of new apartment buildings and the Pasadena Freeway, across the street from Hillside Elementary School in Lincoln Heights. It’s a residential neighborhood and not a wealthy one. It’s mostly Latino, a blend of new immigrants and well-established, working-class families.

It’s one of LA’s oldest communities, and it’s the kind of place that can get stepped on in the clamor for jobs and prosperity. In fact, that’s precisely how residents felt when the city cleared the way for the apartments.

What really pushed the residents here, though, was the discovery that the lot next door to the apartment buildings was being teed up to become a warehouse. That brought visions of trucks streaming through these streets, barreling next to the school and overwhelming the residents.

So these neighbors did something about it. They bonded together. They formed the Lincoln Heights Community Coalition. They enlisted teachers and students, parents, homeowners and renters. They circulated a petition, which has gathered more than 2,100 signatures. They took advantage of the city’s neighborhood organizational structure and worked with their elected leaders.

Last week, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced that the developer, a company called Xebec, had not secured the necessary building permits. If they intend to go forward with the warehouse, they will need to hold public hearings and address the neighborhood’s concerns. That’s a major shift that will slow down the project and give the neighborhood an opportunity to alter it.

“It is our goal,” Hernandez told me on Monday, “that this project not move forward.”

Some will hear those details and reduce this to NIMBYism, to residents blocking a project that would inconvenience them but that the overall city needs. That’s a common practice — residents all over Southern California often rally to block a homeless shelter or a drug treatment center, expressing their support for providing such services, so long as they’re offered someplace else.

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