Gold Line extension to L.A. Eastside stirs hopes, fears
Some residents say they would welcome more upscale retailers. Others worry the character of the neighborhoods will change.
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 only had 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 from 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 their 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.
