Reseda Retailers See Community Pride as a Welcome Sign

Reseda community leaders trumpeted the arrival Wednesday of a 6,000-pound welcoming sign that was lowered by crane onto a median strip on Sherman Way.

The “Welcome to Reseda” sign replaced one destroyed more than a year ago in a traffic accident. But in the sign’s shadow sat a shattered stone planter, damaged in the crash and still unrepaired, as a reminder of how far Reseda boosters have to go in upgrading the area’s business district.

Once a West San Fernando Valley shopping mecca, Reseda’s commercial strip has been in the throes of an economic downturn as shoppers flocked to enclosed malls elsewhere.

What can a sign do to remedy those deep-seated economic woes?

Not much, representatives of the Reseda Chamber of Commerce and the Reseda Revitalization Corp. admitted Wednesday. But they insisted that community pride is an important starting point.

“What we’re trying to get here is a sense of community,” said Elizabeth Nelson, president of the Reseda Revitalization Corp., a nonprofit company formed in 1981 to raise money to pay for Reseda’s improvements.

Nelson said the company is so confident that Reseda is bouncing back that it is planning to dissolve at the end of this month and turn the rest of the task over to the Chamber of Commerce.

“Reseda is in a transition stage,” Nelson said. “It has gone down a bit, but it’s starting to make a turnaround.”

The $3,500 cost of the welcoming sign, located just west of Lindley Avenue, was split between Revitalization Corp.’s funds and donations from merchants, said Valerie Ford, the corporation’s secretary.

As further evidence of economic life in Reseda, Nelson, Ford and Ann Kinzle, director of the Chamber of Commerce, pointed across the street to the north side of Sherman Way, where Vons Grocery Co. this year spent more than $1 million remodeling a supermarket.

Several small storefronts also have been renovated. Meanwhile, an ordinance governing development along Sherman Way in Reseda is pending before the council. In an effort to make Reseda more attractive to shoppers and investors, the proposal includes building standards and a long list of new businesses that would be banned, such as secondhand stores and pawnshops.

Nonetheless, obstacles to Reseda’s improvement remain as visible as the sign and the crumbled planter behind it. Cars zip along Sherman Way and screech to a halt at stoplights in front of wary pedestrians.

Nelson said Reseda needs more pedestrians to stroll and shop. The drivers are just passing through and the traffic discourages pedestrians from browsing.

At least now, she said, pedestrians and motorists passing by the sign will know they are in Reseda.