Fading Promise, Shining Blight: Unintended Consequences of The Injunction

“WHEREAS, any route bisecting the city would have an irreparable effect on the Lynwood Unified School District in particular, and would be extremely injurious to the social and economic formation of the community in general…”

In 1967, the Lynwood City Council issued a resolution urging the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to appeal to the State Highway Commission, reiterating how “injurious”plans to bisect the city would be. Wars would be waged between corridor cities and bureaucrats from the State working to determine the routes that would be the least damaging to all parties involved. For cities like Lynwood, the obvious scars would come in the form of bulldozed homes, but one could argue that the losses to civic society and community underpinnings rivaled the damage done to city tax rolls. 

In its earliest efforts to voice positions, the city tried to urge freeway planners to adopt a route that would cut through the southernmost region of the city. But these attempts to voice displeasure didn’t go very far as a route that would indeed bisect the city was ultimately chosen. 

The limited ability for city officials to assuage resident concerns was on full display in a 1970 city council meeting that teemed with nerves. It was simply unclear where anyone could get reliable information. With city chambers overflowing, the crowd moved over to Bateman Hall. To be discussed was the city’s intention to sign a Freeway Agreement and a group of representatives from the State Department of Highways was dispatched to share route plans and answer questions. At one point, it was even suggested that the State place a representative in the city full-time to help with answering the onslaught of questions from locals. 

When a resident named Philip Burkemyer inquired about family relocation he was assured by Ed Rawlins, Senior Right-of-Way Agent from DOH that a relocation assistance program would be made available to impacted residents and also stressed that many families were able to move into or continue living in properties that had been acquired by the State. Shortly after this, one of Burkemyer’s neighbors complained about the initial she’d received for the home and rental unit she and her husband had owned for the past 16 years and were depending on to support their retirement. Again, assurances were given around offers and supplemental assistance. 

As DOH agents worked to bat back citizen questions, Councilman John Byork was eager to stress that the State should make efforts to demolish acquired properties as quickly as possible. The State representatives noted that while they wanted to act quickly they would only demolish apartment buildings after all residents have moved out via attrition; not eviction. Presciently, a citizen named Jerry Rokos asked if the Freeway Agreement would include specific commitments to clearing vacant properties given issues with abandoned structures that flared up during development of the Artesia Freeway. The State was emphatic that “a similar situation would not occur in the City of Lynwood.”

This all changed when Judge Pregerson imposed an injunction that would prevent further acquisition and demolition of properties within the corridor. Specifically, the injunction would call for further preparation of environmental impact statements, hearings related to noise and air pollution, additional studies on the housing for the displaced and more specific assurances related to relocation assistance for the displaced.

Fighting An Unwinnable War

Lynwood’s corridor challenges may not have been unique, nonetheless the intensity of these problems was well documented. There was no shortage of issues with which the city needed to grip. In 1974 school overcrowding became a problem.  As the city started to get a grip of FHA abandoned homes, it began to lose battle against corridor abandoned homes that technically belonged to the State. In October 1977, Downey formally requested that 494 homes in the segment of the corridor running through its city limits be removed. Egged on by legislation from Assemblymember Bruce Young geared towards pushing the state to abate blight caused by the vacant structures, Lynwood would pass a similar resolution urging structure removal.

In fact, one of the only tools that the city truly appeared to have was its ability to issue resolutions stating key positions on matters related to the freeway. Without a true seat at the settlement table and without the resources nor political savvy necessary to navigate the alphabet soup of agencies doing battle, the city’s ability to truly advance its own individual interests was quite limited. Making resolutions like one issued in 1975 read as desperate pleas for help addressing the blight, vandalism, an increase in crime, and the loss of long-time business and residential interests” that had come about as a result of the injunction. They would issue a similarly pathetic plea a little over a year later. City officials were stressing that buildings had already deteriorated to a material extent, police activity within the corridor had already spiked and the only remedy would be demolition of the homes and the beginning of freeway construction. 

Coverage of the blight throughout the corridor and in Lynwood specifically would continue and in many regards intensify during 1978. In February 1979, Adriana Gianturco who was the Director of CalTrans at the time, began to lay out a timetable for I-105’s completion given progress being made towards a settlement. Nonetheless, action wasn’t immediate and later that year school-aged children would find the body of a nude 30-year old woman who had been brutally beaten to death. 

Relief couldn’t come soon enough for the city. A report by Sheriff Peter Pitchess noted that while the Century Freeway Corridor represented only 12.4% of the total city area, it generated over 20% of all major crimes, 50% of all rapes, 15% of all aggravated assaults and over 20% of robberies in the city. At this point in time the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had been handling police operations in Lynwood since 1977. 

As Sheriff Peter J. Pitchess would express in a letter to CIty Manager Edward Valliere in May 1979:

“From our perspective, the vacant buildings along Fernwood Avenue offer an attractive inducement, to those so inclined, to prey upon potential innocent crime victims and also to dump the “by products” of crimes committed elsewhere in that particular area of the City.”

City officials struggled mightily to find their footing as they awaited some form - any form - of closure on the freeway front. When Tommy Davis assumed the position of City Manager, he noted to the LA Times that Lynwood was “going through something of a culture shock.” At that moment in time, the city’s Black, Brown and White populations were divided roughly into equal thirds. Although Davis acknowledged the challenges presented by the abandoned homes strewn through the corridor, it was also clear that the impacts of Proposition 13 would promise to make his efforts challenging. As the Gerald Faris of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Proposition 13 cut deeply into tax increments which make redevelopment financially feasible.” 

Efforts from the city to plan for its future at times proved futile. For example, in 1980 the city adopted a new housing element of its General Plan. But generally the city remained at the mercy of CalTrans who had not yet firmed up plans for the 400 abandoned homes it owned in the corridor. The city lacked the authority to regulate the state’s property and CalTrans had not yet decided if it would temporarily revive the houses or just move to destroy them.

In 1980, the director of the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority conducted an analysis that was shared with leaders from Lynwood, Norwalk and Downey. In the study it was found that nearly 50% of stray calls received by the agency and 40% of dog bites reported occurred within the corridor. Unsurprisingly, the vacant structures and unruly vegetation within the corridor were identified are contributing factors. 

That same year, another article from the Times ran highlighting a pack of rabid dogs roaming the streets of Lynwood. A resident named Beatrice Christian shared details of her horror-story-like encounter. “I jumped up and looked out and saw the one dog - the lead dog for the pack - standing by my window.” With encounters becoming more common, desperate residents took to firing at the wild animals with BB guns and even attempting to spray chemicals on their properties that they believed would serve as deterrents.

The following week, residents showed up to the city council meeting to levy complaints about the services being delivered by the SAACA. Per usual, there wasn’t much that city leaders could do but listen. And as it would go, the wild dog narrative would take on such legend that it would travel throughout and beyond the corridor, so much so that it would contribute to the psyche of a group of young artists that would eventually put on an experiential art show in Lynwood’s corridor called Transitional Use.

Two years later, yet another city manager would claim a victory over the wild dogs given the decline in citizen reports.

The surreal circumstances extended well beyond the rabid dogs. Murder and/or dumping of bodies in the corridor was not uncommon. In general the area attracted flocks of criminals and drug abusers given the diminished likelihood of them being caught by Lynwood’s police force, which would eventually cede control to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department after the local police force disbanded. 

One heartbreaking story was that of Joseph Spallino, a Lynwood resident questioned about his experiences living in the corridor in 1978. Spallino shares details of his life under duress which entailed sleeping with a shotgun after having been robbed 7 times. He described his troubles as being attributable to the freeway, lamenting that “they’ve taken my heart away” and “I sure miss my neighbors.”

Particularly poignant was correspondence from a group that dubbed itself the Parents of Wilson Elementary School. The school was and is still presently located adjacent to the Century corridor nearly Lynwood Road and Bullis Road. Given this proximity, the school and its students found themselves exposed to many of the corridor’s ills. It was noted that 235 children were forced to pass through the corridor each day on their way to school, forcing them to be exposed to the individuals taking up shelter in the abandoned homes. The letter notes:

“During the last two years, our mother (sic) and children, on the way to and from school, have been attacked, robbed, harassed, and sexually assaulted by people who are hiding in and about abandoned homes which sit on the planned 105 Freeway corridor.”

The drafters of the letter would go on to add that “sometimes we have been stoned by people hiding on the roof tops...men have come out and exposed themselves” and “they have tried to intice (sic) some children to come into the empty houses.” It would have been difficult for an elected official representing the area at any level to turn a blind eye to such ongoings. Yet, even when such cries for help were met with sympathetic ears, there was little that officials - particularly city and county officials - could do to provide any immediate relief. 

Assemblymember Bruce Young noted that “the real tragedy is what we’re doing to people’s lives.” Adding that “an environmental group has caused them harassment and suffering.” Lynwood by this time had become an almost post-apocalyptic distressed urban area. The city’s overall population had dropped by about 5,000 people and there were 700 fewer available housing units, including numerous apartment complexes. Officials at the time believed that they had already incurred a loss of $150 million in taxes and other economic activity thanks to the Century Freeway. It would be almost 15 years from this point in time before the rubber would ever hit the road on the highway that cut the city in two. 

Citizens in Lynwood continued to seek out ways to express their frustration with the city’s crime-riddled state as they gathered at a “rally” in September 1980. Roughly 45 attendees showed up and the city manager noted that “it was a little like attending a reunion.” The citizens didn’t quite have the tools necessary to properly articulate a plan that had any chance of succeeding. The city manager would go on to note that a more representative city staff and city council might help move things along given the increasingly diverse citizenry and the exclusively white city leadership.

Even with an agreement drawing closer on the legal front, the damage to the social fabric of Lynwood had already done. With concerns around mounting costs always top of mind, it was agreed that the one man 12-hour patrol being funded for Lynwood’s corridor region to be monitored was insufficient after a 22-year old woman was raped and murdered in the parking lot of a donut store after the patrol’s shift had ended. That same night another man was robbed and murdered in a grocery store parking lot near the corridor.

Mayor Eugene Green lamented the state of affairs while speaking with Los Angeles Times writer Larry Stammer. “There used to be a real good restaurant on that corner...and over there, there used to be a real nice church,” he said while pointing out normalcy from the past. Shortly thereafter he would focus on the new realities facing the city he was leading. “We had a couple of murders in that vacant apartment house.”

The corridor cities increasingly found themselves playing a game of telephone between the State and the Feds. One party would point fingers at the others and the other would respond in kind. Without funding certainty, there would be no path towards freeway completion; no end in sight to the corridor desolation. 

In May 1981, John Byork represented Lynwood as part of a delegation that went to Washington DC to meet with Reagan Administration officials seeking a definite “yes” or “no” on support for the Century Freeway within 60 days. It was Governor Reagan that thirteen years prior sought inclusion of I-105 in the Interstate System and now it was President Reagan being asked for support to continue moving the project along. 

Mervyn Dymally and Bruce Young helped to arrange many of the meetings that the delegation of city leaders would attend. The most important meeting of the trip was with Director Ray Barnhart of the Federal Highway Administration. In speaking with the delegates, he noted that the Reagan Administration “is concerned more about people than past policies.” He went on the call the Century Freeway Corridor “a monument to gross government inefficiency which cannot be allowed to continue damaging the communities through which it runs.” Barnhart didn’t give any final answers, but he did agree to personally fly out to California and take a tour of the corridor. 

Transitional Use: Artistic Absurdity Amidst Desolation

How many times do we have to learn that historical judgments about art turn out to be political judgments as much as anything else?

In 1982, amidst all of the hand-wringing, Lynwood’s corridor would truly become a theater of the absurd. A group of artists from the Los Angeles-based Foundation for Art Resources (FAR) banded together to put on Transitional Use, a show with the goal of introducing people in the region to “environmental art.” Artists were given $2800 in funding and would go on to create 10 projects in what Klunder described as a region “where whole neighborhoods have vanished and boarded-up homes are the only evidence that life once unfolded there.” 

The participating artists riffed heavily on the post-apocalyptic nature of Lynwood’s segment of the corridor. Candy Lewis noted that the group was turning “a ghost town into a work of art.” Judith Simonian would add that the FAR artists were “trying to utilize something that’s been deteriorating for a long time and give it some life.”

Not all locals appreciated the presence of the group of outsiders, as some took to vandalizing artwork before the exhibition was set to open. However, artist Ann Preston shared with the Times that “residents who remain on the fringes of the freeway’s path have been ‘tremendously friendly’”. Recounts of the event make it difficult to generalize the prevailing sentiment from residents, but the mere presence of somewhat shocking installations concocted by a group not native to the community must have surefly ruffled the feathers of some residents. 

While the artists certainly aimed to create a very explicit commentary on the conditions that had brought about the desolation in Lynwood’s corridor, they at times lacked context and/or missed the point altogether. Candy Lewis, for one, said that her work recognized families “locked out of the dream of owning a house.” Lewi’s work incorporated a chain-link fence in the place of a wooden fence. A representation of a picket fence was actually created inside the abandoned structure to represent a dream believed to be unattainable. 

Lewis’ commentary may have been fine when applied at a more generalized level. However, this wasn’t necessarily the case in Lynwood. Right-of-way in Lynwood - and elsewhere through the corridor - didn’t just wipe away renters. It also wiped away sizable pockets of homeowners, as noted by Thomas, that undoubtedly played stabilizing roles in their respective communities

The show would run for roughly a month (September 4th - September 30th). Its works spread over a 20-block area, Klunder felt it to be lacking a cohesive message and suggested that the show “appeared to be a far better concept than exhibition.” 

“Its weakness - in overall visual terms - is partly a result of limited resources and difficult physical conditions and partly a reflection of artists disinclination to intrude on an area that is not their neighborhood or to point out villains in a long-festering, extremely complex situation.”

Michael Wright of the State’s Housing and Community Development department worked to get approvals for the artists to operate their show. “It’s a good temporary, transitional use of vacant housing,” he reasoned. “It’s better than having it as a no man’s land down there.”

In her review of the show, Hunter Drohojowska proclaimed that “the Lynwood area is a sad one, the manicured appearance of homes which escaped government purchase accentuating the forlorn quality of their starved neighbors.” 

While revisiting the show in her 2017 dissertation, Mary Margaret Thomas gave context to the “rhetoric of ruin” that colored both the exhibition and coverage of corridor cities like Lynwood during that era. In the show and elsewhere, the voices of those affected by the carnage the Century’s bisection caused the city were often unaccounted for. While the remnants of whatever signs of resilience that may have existed has largely faded away, what remains are the visceral tellings of the murder and mayhem that existed in corridor cities like Lynwood. Accounts that may cause some to overlap those culpable at the policy-creation level. 

Today, the Transitional Use show can largely be considered a forgotten event. Not unlike the displaced residents in the region of the corridor that ran through Lynwood’s city limits. Within a few months of the show’s conclusion, the participating artists had already turned their attention to new endeavors and the remaining homes in the Lynwood corridor would begin to be torn down. 

Talking About Progress: Elected Official Victory Laps

Chaired by Glenn Anderson, after whom the freeway would eventually be named, the Congressional Subcommittee on Surface Transportation held a hearing in the city of Lynwood to discuss a path towards completion for the Century Freeway. The chairman marved at the 30,000 jobs that CalTrans estimated would be created as a result of the freeway’s completion. A few months earlier, the first construction project overall began with a $2.3 million contract for the State Street crossing in Lynwood. This fact lent itself to a more upbeat mood from many of those testifying as there no longer appeared to be a material risk that the freeway would not be built.

During the hearing, Merv Dymally voiced his concerns around access for displaced residents. Speaking to agency representatives he noted, “we are talking about someone dislocated in Lynwood. You have got to go all the way out to Inglewood, not even on the corridor.” As one wades through the mountains of documentation around the Century’s construction, an alarmingly limited amount of information is available related to efforts taken to reduce friction and enhance access for corridor residents being uprooted. 

James Quinn, Mayor of Downey noted that he was “thrilled” about the freeway being in his city and even beamed when sharing that his “house was one of the first houses ever to be taken in Downey.” Yet, in spite of freeway work beginning, his priority now became ensuring that the over 300 homes remaining in the Downey corridor be addressed given public safety and policing concerns. Councilman John Byork spoke on behalf of Lynwood and the Corridor Cities Caucus. Building on Mayor Quinn’s sentiments he noted that Lynwood “was the first [city] that went and asked a judge for additional police protection, because we found that our police department and our fire department both were spending in excess of 75% of their time protecting State property.”

Almost a year later, as became tradition, John Byork was present at an August 1983 hearing held in Downey, California to discuss freeway progress. In his remarks he shared, in no uncertain terms, the city’s hopes around the Century’s completion:

The future progress of our city revolves around the completion of the I-105. The 7 miserable years of delays caused us many problems from our little all-America city. However, the advent of the freeway has breathed new life into our community… Citizens are now staying instead of fleeing and some are coming back and an air of open enthusiasm seems to be prevailing in our city at the moment.

During this same hearing, a South Gate city councilman named William DeWitt lamented the harm that the freeway caused the City of Lynwood and noted his hopes “that the industrial revitalization and commercial revitalization [would] greatly enhance [Lynwood] and thusly some of that will spill over into our community also.” South Gate bore nowhere near as large of a freeway burden as Lynwood, but it was clear that given the close proximity of the two cities that Lynwood’s problems were South Gate’s problems, and that any Lynwood economic gains would lead to South Gate economic gains, as well. 

One specific path to “industrial revitalization and commercial revitalization” as agreed by numerous participants at the hearing would be the inclusion of an off ramp at Alameda. But much to the dismay of the Alameda off ramp advocates, a new off ramp could not be introduced without re-opening the heavily scrutinized Consent Decree. More than 20 years after the opening of the Century Freeway, no off ramp at Alameda exists.