Setback for Los Angeles warehouse project made Lincoln Heights a stronger community

A small victory in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles may not seem like much from the outside — and it may prove temporary. But this recent development so far has affirmed a sense of balance in the city’s priorities and supplied evidence that even as LA concentrates on homelessness and housing, it can tackle other questions, too.

The feud is over a plot of land wedged between a set of new apartment buildings and the Pasadena Freeway, across the street from Hillside Elementary School in Lincoln Heights. It’s a residential neighborhood and not a wealthy one. It’s mostly Latino, a blend of new immigrants and well-established, working-class families.

It’s one of LA’s oldest communities, and it’s the kind of place that can get stepped on in the clamor for jobs and prosperity. In fact, that’s precisely how residents felt when the city cleared the way for the apartments.

What really pushed the residents here, though, was the discovery that the lot next door to the apartment buildings was being teed up to become a warehouse. That brought visions of trucks streaming through these streets, barreling next to the school and overwhelming the residents. 

So these neighbors did something about it. They bonded together. They formed the Lincoln Heights Community Coalition. They enlisted teachers and students, parents, homeowners and renters. They circulated a petition, which has gathered more than 2,100 signatures. They took advantage of the city’s neighborhood organizational structure and worked with their elected leaders.

Last week, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced that the developer, a company called Xebec, had not secured the necessary building permits. If they intend to go forward with the warehouse, they will need to hold public hearings and address the neighborhood’s concerns. That’s a major shift that will slow down the project and give the neighborhood an opportunity to alter it.

“It is our goal,” Hernandez told me on Monday, “that this project not move forward.”

Some will hear those details and reduce this to NIMBYism, to residents blocking a project that would inconvenience them but that the overall city needs. That’s a common practice — residents all over Southern California often rally to block a homeless shelter or a drug treatment center, expressing their support for providing such services, so long as they’re offered someplace else.

But this proposed warehouse really is misplaced at this site. There are houses and apartments all around it, as well as restaurants and small stores. It’s adjacent to a school, and it’s right in the middle of a community that’s already overburdened. The residents of Lincoln Heights carry more than their share of the pollution and inconvenience that modern society extracts in return for commerce. 

They’re right to insist that this burden be spread around.

Put another way: There is precisely zero chance that this project would be moving forward in a wealthy enclave, one of those parts of the city where residents have the names and phone numbers of lobbyists queued up.

“You talk about this being in Santa Monica or West Los Angeles?” Hernandez said. “Heck no.”

Richard Riordan, who was a multimillionaire investor before becoming LA mayor in 1993, used to remark that government worked best when it could come to the aid of communities that were organized. Some people heard that as a rich white guy scolding the underprivileged and demanding they work harder.

But that wasn’t his point: He tried to argue that organization was something any community could do — that it didn’t require lawyers and lobbyists; it only required caring. 

That’s not limited to those with money. The opportunity to organize is the opposite of elitism — or, at least, it can be.

Two days before Thanksgiving, the activists fighting this warehouse convened a press conference and demonstration outside Hillside Elementary. With barely a day’s notice, more than 100 people showed up, many with their kids, walking a picket line in the rain. They were joined by Councilmember Hernandez as well as Dr. Rocío Rivas of the LA Unified School Board and other local representatives.

They joined the call to block the warehouse, which they refer to as an “an industrial depot” and say poses health threats to children, future apartment dwellers and others. Hernandez would like to see a park on the property, and hopes the time gained by slowing down the project will make it possible to find potential buyers for it.

None of this guarantees that Lincoln Heights is out of the woods. “It’s not over,” said Michael Henry Hayden, who has helped organize these residents. But if the developer decides to reapply for permission to build on this property, “there will be new checks in place.”

Victories are hard to come by when it comes to protecting neighborhoods, particularly those without money or long histories of activism. But that makes them all the sweeter.

For now, Lincoln Heights gets a reprieve, as well as a mobilized set of residents and a council member committed to looking out for them. That may be enough.