Inglewood May Install Wall Along L.A. Border

Call it the Great Wall of Inglewood.

As part of a crime-fighting effort in a neighborhood it hopes to revitalize, the Inglewood City Council has tentatively approved building a five-block-long, eight-foot-high wall along the Inglewood-Los Angeles border.

The proposed wall would be erected along West Boulevard, a north-south street bordering the two cities in an area officials say has become a magnet for drug dealing, gangs and other crime.

The wall, which would run from Hyde Park Boulevard to 68th Street, is part of a broad strategy to replace ailing businesses along the street with homes and to prevent automobile traffic from using east-west arteries near West Boulevard to cross Inglewood.

West Boulevard once was a bustling commercial strip, largely because it was the primary route into Inglewood from Los Angeles in the 1920s. But as nearby Crenshaw Boulevard developed into the major thoroughfare and lured away potential customers, fortunes gradually declined along West Boulevard. Today, the few retail shops lining the street are interspersed with boarded-up buildings.

“The street’s glory days are over,” Inglewood City Planner William Barnett said. “It doesn’t have a commercial future and it’s become a problem street.”

The redevelopment strategy calls for the city to acquire the run-down commercial property along the street and construct homes that would face away from West Boulevard toward an alley. The wall would line West Boulevard and the back yards of the homes. To acquire the West Boulevard parcels, city officials said they would first negotiate with property owners and then, if talks broke down, use the city’s condemnation power to seize the land.

A new street would be created parallel to West Boulevard to allow access to the homes. The wall would be landscaped for both aesthetics and to help prevent graffiti, city officials said.

Inglewood Police Capt. James Seymour said that cracking down on crime along West Boulevard is now difficult because the street straddles the Inglewood-Los Angeles line and involves two separate police jurisdictions. “We have our bad apples in Inglewood, but much of the crime (that occurs in the area) is on the Los Angeles side,” he said.

Inglewood Councilman Anthony Scardenzan, who represents the area, said he has received a flood of complaints from fed-up residents living near West Boulevard.

“There’s drug dealing. There’s drunk people walking around. There’s graffiti and gangs and prostitution,” he said. “We in the city of Inglewood are suffering because of people from Los Angeles who come into our city and cause trouble. Now we’re trying to isolate ourselves.” Although the council approved the plan in concept, city planners said it requires additional study before it can proceed.

A representative for Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the area of Los Angeles that would abut the wall, said the councilwoman had not been presented with Inglewood’s plan yet and therefore had no comment.

The proposed wall is an example of a growing trend among cities to use barricades to control crime.

In Los Angeles and other cities, police recently have been setting up barricades in drug-torn neighborhoods to restrict access and monitor who comes in and goes out. Planners, meanwhile, tout walled communities, like the popular Carleton Square development next to the Forum in Inglewood, as safe neighborhoods where access to outsiders is restricted.