Volunteering in Jefferson Park

For the past nine years members of Jefferson Park United (JPU) have gathered for their monthly Thursday meeting.

All eight of them.

“The organization is about our community, and making sure it’s a safe space as well as a place that our residents are universally respected,” member Steve Peckman said.

Everyone in JPU has volunteered, and they’ve agreed to help the community in whatever ways they can. Typically, that involves remaining up-to-date with local news. This could mean monitoring the addition of a Starbucks or a liquor store to the area, but over the past few years JPU come to focus on two major projects: the preservation of the neighborhood’s historical architecture and the regulation of a local oil drilling site.

In 2011 the Los Angeles Department of City Planning officially recognized Jefferson Park as a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), and in 2015 they passed additional protection ordinances as well. The ordinances make it much harder to build new homes in the area, and make it impossible to demolish or substantially renovate homes already built without permission. It was done in an attempt to preserve the historic houses of the area, and it was done, in part, because of JPU.

“The city had to be persuaded that the people wanted this,” said JPU member Audrey Arlington. “Many people worked hard for years to establish this HPOZ, and now we’ve got to inform the residents of the area.”

JPU received the 2016 HPOZ Award from the city last September for their efforts in handing out posters, flyers and door hangers to every house covered by the HPOZ. The flyers came with frequently asked questions and information about what the homeowners can and can’t do to the houses. Ever since, JPU has been visiting new members of the community to inform them of the responsibilities of owning a house in an HPOZ.

Arlington strongly believes the ruling has helped preserve the architecture, because since 2011 it has been illegal to renovate any exteriors to houses without city approval.

“Jefferson Park is one of the last affordable single family neighborhoods in Los Angeles. If people start tearing down houses and building modern architectural atrocities, the neighborhood is doomed,” she said.

Homeowner Lorena Banuelos, 29, has only been living in her house for two years, but she also believes the laws are important for the area.

“There’s beautiful old houses in Jefferson Park, and I tend to agree that if these laws weren’t in place, people would just knock down and rebuild constantly,” she said.

So while certain members of the JPU like Arlington deal primarily with informing residents and upholding the HPOZ laws, others like Peckman deal with the local oil site litigations.

Located at Adams Blvd. and Gramercy Pl., the Freeport-McMoRan oil drilling site has been operating under various owners for decades. For most of that time, the oil site had no issues with local government or it’s surrounding residential neighborhood. But in 2014, the company requested an exemption from a city-conducted environmental inspection. The exemption would pertain to a gas burner Freeport-McMoRan wanted to install outside of their designated boundary, on a landscaped plot of land immediately south of their facilities.

That’s when the JPU got involved.

“The oil company actually had their request approved by the city planning commission, but I went and filed an appeal,” he said. “The neighbors weren’t at all happy with the idea of an unregulated expansion, so we compromised and get them to submit a fully detailed environmental plan with their formal request.”

The request by Freeport-McMoRan to build a gas burner was eventually denied. Peckman, along with other JPU members and residents, fought the request successfully.

“Not one person spoke in favor of the oil company,” he said. “The concerns of the people not only stem from the potential health hazards of a gas burner outside the designated area, but also in the lack of review from the city itself.”

Peckman, the JPU and the residents of Jefferson Park believe the city itself is not conducting a proper environmental review of the site, and hasn’t for years.

“The city has been negligent in ensuring that when applications come before it, they undergo appropriate legally mandated review. No review occurred for this site or related sites,” he said.

Beginning with the initial request to expand its operations, JPU and residents of Jefferson Park have been voicing their opinions about these issues for the past three years. Peckman, a resident of Jefferson Park himself, doesn’t get tired of it. He sees the area as a very vocal and caring neighborhood.

“I think what you see in this neighborhood is a community that pulls together as a whole, and I can tell you as a resident here that’s just so invigorating.”

Freeport-McMoRan did not respond for comment.