Dispute Won’t Stop Imminent Closing of Gates at Park Labrea : Housing: A controversy over who will pay the costs won’t keep L.A.’s biggest rental complex from becoming a guarded community next month.

After more than a year of planning, the gates of Park Labrea are scheduled to clang shut next month, closing off the biggest rental complex in Los Angeles to all but its 10,000 residents, their guests, workers and emergency vehicles.

Managers say residents are happy to see Park Labrea converted into a fenced and guarded community, with less traffic and no outsiders competing for parking spaces.

But leaders of the Park Labrea Tenants Assn. are fighting efforts by Forest City Enterprises Inc., which manages Park Labrea and owns a half-interest in it, to charge them more than $3 million for the fences, gating and the cost of buying the streets from the city.

Plans call for the gates to be locked by mid-February in the 176-acre complex, which is made up of 18 high-rises and 26 garden apartment buildings in a maze of octagons and traffic circles stretching east of Fairfax Avenue between 3rd and 6th streets.

Delays at the gates could cause backups along 3rd and 6th streets, busy east-west arteries, and Hauser Boulevard, a north-south street that bisects Park Labrea, but city officials and project managers said they believe any delays will be manageable.

Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars, and commercial delivery vehicles will have easy access through three gates where security guards will be stationed.

Although the idea of enclosing Park Labrea was first proposed as early as 1978, it was rushed to completion last fall in an effort to beat an Oct. 1 deadline created when the City Council changed the rules under which landlords can pass on to tenants the cost of property improvements.

Under the old rules, the Park Labrea management could charge tenants the full cost, $3,054,588. The cost would be divided among residents of Park Labrea’s 4,212 apartments, amortized over five years and added to tenants’ monthly rent in perpetuity.

The $12.09 that the tenants would be charged would then be subject to yearly increases based on changes in the consumer price index.

Under the new rules, however, only 50% of the cost of capital improvements may be passed on to tenants, in the form of a $6.05 surcharge that would be dropped after six years.

Park Labrea’s application was filed last Sept. 25, but tenants say that the project was not finished in time to qualify for the larger increase.

“(The fences and gates) were up before Oct. 1,” said Jerry Baum, director of special projects for Park Labrea. “The idea was to put them in service right away, and I prevailed and said, ‘Let’s take our time and do it right and work out any bugs we might have,’ ” he said.

But Paul Ash, president of the tenants association, said, “How could they go ahead and submit something on Sept. 25 when it was still in its infancy stage and not completed? If the Rent Stabilization Board allows them to get the 100%, then we’re going to fight it in court.”

City Rent Stabilization Division officials will rule on the matter, but it may take a while because they are still digging their way out of an avalanche of 1,000 rent-hike applications filed by landlords last September.

The usual caseload for the division’s 10 analysts is about 250 a month, according to Mike Hembree, assistant director of the division.

“It’s a bit of a controversy,” he said of the Park Labrea claim, the biggest case in his backlog.

“From the owner’s standpoint, they’re saying, ‘We’ve been at this for years,’ ” Hembree said. “The tenants will say, ‘You didn’t get it in under the wire, so we want to only pay half of it.’

“If you’ve been at it for years, what’s a day here or there? But we deal with the strict legality of it,” he said. “We’re working on it now.”

Whatever the decision, the loser is likely to demand an appeal, which will be heard by an outside hearing officer appointed by the city. Any further objections must be aired in court, Hembree said.

Until the rent question is settled, residents will not have to pay anything extra, but Baum said the new security system will go into effect by mid-February regardless.

Although management once spoke of holding meetings to brief the residents about the changes, Baum said it would have been impossible to get everybody together, so residents are being notified by mail instead.

“We’re going to do it all at the same time, but we may leave a gate or two open in order to help the rush-hour traffic,” Baum said. “There’s nothing that says it has to be in place on a certain day after approximately 40 years of Park Labrea.”

Three gates are already staffed by unarmed guards at checkpoints along 3rd Street, 6th Street and Hauser Boulevard.

Once the new gates are closed, residents who put down a deposit of $40 for electronic signal devices will be able to drive in and out through 11 unmanned entrances. Residents also have been issued keys to 74 pedestrian gates.

Hauser Boulevard, a busy street that bends through the complex, will stay open. But a network of smaller streets--on which shoppers, visitors to nearby museums and residents of apartments adjoining Park Labrea have been parking for decades--will be barred to anyone without good reason to be there, Baum said.

Residents will have stickers on their windshields, and guests will be issued passes.