David Contreras sits alone in his rockabilly clothing shop in Boyle Heights. At first, he explains, he wanted an "atomic age" theme for his store, with Cadillac fins mounted on walls, stars on the ceiling -- sort of like a glamorous 1950s department store.
But he figured that would scare people away in the working-class neighborhood he grew up in before moving away to New York and then Silver Lake. So he went with a tiki-bar look instead, thinking it would be warmer and humbler. Some people still freak out when they walk in, he said, raising his clenched hands and contorting his face as if to impersonate a doomed woman on a vintage horror movie poster. People still stumble into his store, wondering where Frank's TV repair shop went.
"Everyone thinks we're gentrifying, but we don't want to gentrify. We just want to be a cool place for people to hang out," said Contreras, 49. "We're like the Neiman Marcus of Boyle Heights! Everyone likes glamour. What's wrong with that?"
Contreras' store sits in an old, wedge-shaped brick building at Boyle Avenue and Whittier Boulevard, a crossroads of impending change on the Eastside. By next year, a new light rail line will be running a few blocks from his store -- the first foray of L.A.'s rail system into the eastern neighborhoods beyond downtown's skyscrapers.
The Gold Line extension has long been hailed as a turning point for the predominantly Latino areas, "transit equity" for residents who heavily use mass transit but until now have had only one option: the bus.
But as the opening of the line draws closer, there is growing angst about how it will change development patterns in Boyle Heights and East L.A.
The construction of rail across Los Angeles over the last three decades has helped transform some neighborhoods. The area around the Red Line subway terminus in North Hollywood has become a hip arts and theater district with a growing skyline of loft and condo projects. The Red Line has also helped fuel the revival of Hollywood, with dense mixed-use developments popping up next to subway stations. The Blue Line helped foster downtown Long Beach's resurgence.
But the Eastside is different. Residents there have much more ambivalent feelings about gentrification than the neighborhoods to the west and north. Some have high hopes for the Gold Line, expecting it to bring some of the better chain shops -- Borders, Trader Joe's -- that have avoided the Eastside. Others are more suspicious, fearing that an influx of money and outsiders will change the area's character and push out the poor.
"I would love to have a yoga studio that's affordable," resident Sandra Martinez, 40, said with a half-guilty laugh. "The problem with a yoga studio is when that moves in, that's the end -- that's the definition of gentrification."
Even before the Gold Line started nearing completion, there were growing signs of change.
There's a controversial proposal to knock down the working-class 1930s Wyvernwood Garden Apartments to make room for mostly market-rate condominiums and retail space. Developers have also been talking about transforming the 14-story Art Deco Sears, Roebuck & Co. building into a complex of condos, retail space and restaurants.
Experts said the addition of the light rail line, which will run from Union Station to East L.A., will accelerate development.
Rail lines mean access, which is valuable, said Lisa Schweitzer, a professor in the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development. Rail also means a bump in property values, she said, with land around the line becoming "perpetually valuable."
Some developments are already planned with the Gold Line. That, experts say, will in turn become a catalyst for more development -- though the toughening economy could temporarily slow that down. Then there's the fact that traffic is worsening in L.A. and people might want to move closer to the core of the city.
"Naturally, these neighborhoods will be gentrified," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who represents much of the Eastside. "But they will be gentrified overnight if we allow developers to."
Diversity long gone
At various points, going back to the early 20th century, Jews, Russians, Italians, Japanese and Mexicans all called Boyle Heights and East L.A. home. The neighborhoods' more than half a dozen old cemeteries -- including the Serbian Cemetery on 3rd Street, along the Gold Line route -- speak to the long-gone diversity.
By the 1960s, Boyle Heights and East L.A. had begun to cement themselves as the motherland for L.A.'s growing Mexican American community. The neighborhoods, always working-class, remained vibrant but became poorer with the infusion of immigrants.
Although Boyle Heights and much of the Eastside have been pocked with gangs, crime has declined sharply for several years. The housing boom that hit many parts of Southern California -- before the bust -- arrived in these neighborhoods a bit later, but they remained largely affordable.
