Windsor Village, Windsor Square, Larchmont Village neighborhoods meet
WINDSOR SQUARE president Larry Guzin speaks at the association’s annual “Town Hall” meeting, held in person at The Ebell on November 17. Resting on the podium’s lower shelf is the Squeaky Wheel Award and its 2022 certificate.
Neighborhood meetings gathered locals in late November. Two took place in Windsor Village (Wilshire to Olympic; Crenshaw [west side] to Lucerne) because the annual “Town Hall” meeting of the Windsor Square Association (Wilshire to Beverly; Arden to Van Ness) was held at the historic Ebell Club. The third was for the Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association, which covers the area north of Beverly Boulevard to Melrose Avenue, between Arden Boulevard and Wilton Place.
Windsor Village
The Windsor Village Association (WVA) had its monthly meeting Nov. 20, just hours before the group hosted a movie at Harold Henry Park — one of the many events put on by the WVA to bring joy to the community while giving neighbors an opportunity to come together.
Top on the November monthly meeting’s agenda was the re-election of board members Heather Brel, Jeff Estow, Chris Urner, Barbara Pflaumer and Andrew Lo. Half of the members were up for re-election this year; the other half, including Julie Kim, Ginger Tanner, Stephanie Shim, Marilyn Batchelor and Bruce Beiderwell, will be up for reelection in 2023.
The meeting, sparsely attended due to the Thanksgiving holiday, touched on many matters the WVA champions, including park clean-ups (Harold Henry Park being a neighborhood centerpiece), movie nights,
At the meeting, board president Barbara Pflaumer emphasized the need for the neighborhood to focus on emergency preparedness. In the past, the WVA has offered emergency preparedness training, and Pflaumer said this will be a big focus for the board in 2023.
Windsor Square
The Nov. 17 annual “Town Hall” meeting of the Windsor Square Association (WSA) also featured a focus on emergency preparedness. Crisanta Gonzalez, City of Los Angeles emergency management coordinator for the RYLAN (“Ready Your LA Neighborhood”) program spoke, as did LAPD Olympic Division commanding officer Captain Aaron Ponce.
Elected as members of the WSA board of directors for the coming year were June Bilgore, Jeryl Bowers, Brian Curran, Amy Forbes, Gary Gilbert, Jason Greenman, Larry Guzin, Steve Kazanjian, Angie Szentgyorgi, Steve Tator, Jane Usher and John Welborne.
EBELL LIVING ROOM was the setting for the 2022 annual meeting of the Windsor Square Association.
The WSA annually presents its Squeaky Wheel Award for protecting or improving the quality of life in Windsor Square. This year’s awardee was Louis Fantasia (also a Chronicle columnist!) “for obtaining safety improvements on and adjoining Sixth Street,” specifically in the stretch between Wilton Place and the Getty House on Irving Boulevard.
Larchmont Village
A few days before, on Nov. 15, the Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association (LVNA) semi-annual meeting took place. After crime, land use issues were among the chief concerns raised by residents. City and state efforts to build more housing are jeopardizing single-family neighborhoods, according to LVNA members.
“Our entire community is at risk,” said LVNA resident Sam Uretsky. “The north side of Beverly and Larchmont Boulevard North is all TOC.” The city’s Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) law grants developers “bonuses,” things such as more density and greater height, for multi-family residential projects within a half-mile (2,640 feet) of a “qualified major transit stop,” which can simply be a street intersection where two or more bus routes meet or cross and where passengers can transfer.
Uretsky asserted that the TOC law is “part of the state-mandated effort to destroy, either deliberately, or not, single-family R-1 neighborhoods.”
Resident and architect Chris Shanley concurred, warning of current city and state policies to build at all costs. “We need to fight back, and hopefully we’ll get the attention of the new mayor, and developers will build where there is actual transportation and in commercial corridors and not in single-family neighborhoods,” he said.
Crime, security and safety were high on the agenda. For a full report on the crime discussion, turn to Page 13 of this Section 2.
Category: Real Estate