President's Page

April 2025

“The objective and purpose of the LVNA has, since 1987, been the preservation and enhancement of our neighborhood.”

What does that mean?

Helping neighbors get speed humps, stop signs and other traffic mitigation and safety elements which can be incorporated to help keep our streets safe. Street maintenance issues, parking including the creation of and participation in Preferred Parking Districts.

Helping neighbors with Crime issues – Party houses, prostitution, assault, robberies, graffiti, excessive commercial use of residential property … how do you access LAPD and other city resources to keep your life and property safe?

Helping neighbors and dealing directly with developers, construction and housing issues.

Helping neighbors access city government and understand its’ often difficult and unfriendly to its own citizens ways … which touch every part of our lives and require knowledge and relationships to navigate.

We advise, we support, we advocate for our neighbors and our neighborhood. But there is no replacing each of our responsibility to represent our own interest.

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We established long-term goals for areas such as North Larchmont, where for over 15 years we’ve advocated for live/work redevelopment and walkable streets which extend the success of South Larchmont all the way to Melrose Avenue.

We’ve taken on the responsibility of repairing the North Larchmont median. The city’s abandonment of their commitment to maintain the median means there is a backlog of repair and updating which needs to be done. There’s now a plan to address those problems and you will continue to see improvements in the coming months. Please stop by and say “Hi” to the crews when you see them out there.

Thanks to the local residents who organized a clean-up a few weeks ago. We support all volunteer community improvement efforts. If you’ve got an idea or an initiative you’d like to organize, please reach out.

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Thousands of people living, working and shopping in a neighborhood with a unique and historic character requires coordination, cooperation and shared interests. It often requires compromise to accommodate differing points of view.

All these things, many of which fall under the title “Quality of Life Issues,” are the core of what we do at the Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association.

March 2025

Hello Fellow Larchmont Village residents!

Many times, fighting through bureaucracy to solve problems can be both slow and frustrating. A decade+ ago, friend of Larchmont Councilmember Tom LaBonge spearheaded a project to complete the median strip on Larchmont Boulevard with the construction of several segments on the northern end within our neighborhood. The LVNA supported the establishment of this median as it provided both an element of traffic calming and neighborhood beautification.

The council office also committed, at that time, to the maintenance of the median. For a good period, everything went great.

Then, as many of you know, we began a long period of instability in our council representation. Including Tom, we’ve had 5 different city councilmembers representing this area over last 10 years. Despite assurances made to the community organization contracted to do median maintenance, the city stopped honoring their commitment, didn’t follow through on payments and things started to fall apart.

There were intermittent attempts by private citizens and LVNA members to help but entropy set in. It became clear we needed a long-term solution, so your neighborhood association stepped in.

After a year of diplomacy, negotiation, bridge building and fence mending, the LVNA has resolved this issue. I’m happy to announce (as any of you wandering by North Larchmont during the rain last week may have noticed) the long overdue rehabilitation of the North Larchmont median has begun. Weeding has started, plant maintenance and replacement plus all other necessary work are planned and agreed to. Work crews will be in and out of there in the next few weeks. As spring comes into view, we will have healthy, safe and attractive landscaping to enjoy.

The objective and purpose of the LVNA has, since 1987, been the preservation and enhancement of our neighborhood, bounded by the south side of Melrose Avenue, the north side of Beverly Blvd, the entirety of Arden Blvd and the west side of Wilton Place. We’re all part of a neighborhood we love. We support the establishment of neighborhood specific 501c3 charities. As nonprofit corporations, they can intensely focus on specific issues and fundraise in a way we cannot.

You can be a leader on issues you care about in our neighborhood. Since 1987, the LVNA has operated on a decentralized system where residents with a passion for a subject or issue become experts helping not just themselves but the neighborhood at large. Our board is knowledgeable in most of the subjects any resident could come up against and is ready, willing and able to be a resource and provide resources to help.

Finally, in the wake of the City Council entertaining a motion to make pro-walkable community revisions to Los Angeles’ zoning, Livable Communities have partnered with a consortium of affordable housing development advocates to launch a design contest focused on a key element – mixed use buildings with a single staircase. Check it out at www.singlestair.com/.

February 2025

Hello Fellow Larchmont Village residents!

When we decided to resume this column in the Chronicle, I don’t think any of us imagined how hectic things would get in our little neighborhood. On our eastern border, we’re dealing with issues surrounding prostitution traffic on Western Avenue, (many thanks to LAPD and particularly SLO Chavez for the task force which is dealing with this every day.)

On Larchmont Blvd two properties (507 N and 531 N) have submitted proposals to the city for buildings which are, frankly, horrendous and a blight on our neighborhood. As developers stack state and city benefits to maximize their profits and offload important features on the surrounding community, neighbors are understandably outraged. The LVNA has been front and center in dealing with these developments from Day 1, meeting and negotiating with developers as part of an ad hoc committee, supporting neighborhood activists, hiring a prominent land use law firm to represent our interests and working with our neighboring associations to bring every lever to bear, as we do on every development in the neighborhood.

The objective and purpose of the LVNA has, since 1987, been the preservation and enhancement of our neighborhood, bounded by the south side of Melrose Avenue, the north side of Beverly Blvd, the entirety of Arden Blvd and the west side of Wilton Place. We have always tried to operate by consensus, no matter the differences of opinion as we’re all part of a neighborhood we love. Also, for many years we have supported the establishment of neighborhood specific 501c3 charities as they can intensely focus on specific issues and fundraise in a way we cannot as a nonprofit corporation.

There is a great opportunity to be a leader on issues you care about in our neighborhood. The LVNA operates on a decentralized committee/specialist system whereby residents with a passion for a subject or issue can become experts helping not just themselves but the neighborhood at large. Additionally, our board has become expert in most of the subjects any resident could come up against and is ready, willing and able to be a resource and provide resources to help.

LAPD – We are a neighborhood which is served by two different LAPD divisions – Olympic Division (from Gower to Wilton) and Wilshire Division (from Arden - Gower). If you see a crime happening, call 911. You can report dumping and many other types of illegal activity via the MY311 app. If you need advice or a helping hand reach out to the Senior Lead Officers at your respective division -Senior Lead Officer Tyler Shuck (Wilshire Division) ((213)712-3715) or Officer Daniel Chavez (Olympic Division) (213-793-0787).

Each LAPD division also has Community Police Advisory Boards (C-PAB),

WE NEED YOUR HELP AND SUPPORT. Join the neighborhood association, sign-up for our email list, write to city officials and turn up for city meetings and hearings when asked. If it interests you, participate in our Board. Also, please install the MY311 app, it’s the most effective way to report many issues to the city.

We’re not going anywhere.

AN INTRODUCTION

Hello fellow Larchmont Village residents! This is first of what we hope will be a regular series of columns updating you about what’s going on in the neighborhood, as well as a forum to communicate directly about urgent issues we’re dealing with which will affect your lives.

I’m Charles D’Atri, the President of the Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association. I’ve been a member since I moved to Larchmont in late 1998 and an officer for nearly that long. The LVNA, which is nearly 40 years old, is unique in the sense that it is not a homeowner only group, we include residents of all types. Our borders run from Wilton Place to the west side of Arden Boulevard, Melrose Ave to Beverly Boulevard.

As a historic and eclectic neighborhood with a variety of types of housing & zoning plus commercial corridors on Melrose and Larchmont Boulevard, we deal with most of the issues (development, upzoning, quality of life, crime) which have become hot buttons across the city, and act as a resource for residents of our area.

We have the good fortune to have informed, committed neighbors as officers and members who have a great deal of knowledge about the issues which affect us. I encourage you to reach out so we can be a resource to help you or refer you to help when you have a problem. Our officers include Charles D’Atri as President, Vince Cox as Vice President, Karen Gilman as Secretary (and Land Use Expert) and Treasurer Sandy Fleck.

We are well aware of the need for housing in Los Angeles and have long played our part with hundreds of multifamily units being built over the last decade+. We recognize the need for and support development of multifamily housing in our R3 areas. We’ve worked with a long list of developers to try to ensure that what’s built is supportive of the character of our neighborhood.

Additionally for 15+ years we have been focused on the potential (and now happening) redevelopment of North Larchmont Boulevard, one of the areas of the neighborhood which features properties that were substantially smaller than the existing zoning allowed even before recent changes. It’s important you know the characteristics we’ve long identified as being critical to the fabric and viability of that street – walkable streets with neighborhood friendly commercial first floor uses, live/work buildings including some reasonable amount of parking which build on rather than just exploit the strengths of the surrounding area and sensitivity and mitigation of the inevitable negative impacts of construction.

With the recent liberalization and encouragement of even greater density by the state and city, there has been an explosion of development, both proposed and anticipated. Unfortunately, in addition to neighborhood friendly, aware builders who take the time to walk our streets and create buildings we can all be proud of, as the area has become more desirable and the impediments to building lessened, rapacious developers with little sensitivity for the neighborhood’s existing balance have become something of a plague on our area. It would be great if every project was sincere in their commitment to affordable housing and buildings which enrich and build upon a successful, future-looking model. That hasn’t been our experience.