Motels Los Angeles

In an effort to attack the prostitution problem in Westlake, the city attorney's office has obtained a permanent injunction setting strict conditions on the Alvarado Palms Motel. The motel's owners, De Chang Peng and his wife, Su Cheng Peng, of Torrance, avoided a trial related to a pending abatement lawsuit brought by the city when they agreed to operate under the conditions set forth in the injunction, said Maria Perez Manning, the deputy city attorney who handled the case.

A motel owned by a Torrance couple has become a target as police get tough on prostitution in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles city attorney's office has obtained a permanent injunction setting strict conditions on the Alvarado Palms Motel, owned by De Chang Peng and his wife, Su Cheng Peng.

A city zoning panel voted Tuesday to impose conditions on the operation of a San Fernando Road motel despite the good faith efforts of the owner to discourage prostitution and other illegal activities in the past six months. Members of the Board of Zoning Appeals, who joined a Foothill Division police sergeant in commending owner Paul C. Wei during a hearing, stopped short of dismissing a finding that the motel has been a public nuisance.

A city zoning panel voted 3 to 1 Tuesday to give the owner of a Pacoima motel six months to prove that he has cleaned up prostitution problems at his business or face proceedings to revoke his motel operating permit. The decision by the city's Board of Zoning Appeals was a victory for Paul C. Wei, owner of the Villa Las Palmas Motel at 12205 San Fernando Road.

Paul Giambalvo is a 50-year-old automobile restorer who for years has been trying to halt the downward slide of his crime-battered North Hills neighborhood. He chases away the drug dealers, prostitutes and others who cluster near his house at a low wall behind a cheap Roscoe Boulevard motel. To reduce the spillover of what he claims are lowlifes from the $22.95-a-night Allstar Inn, he repairs the barbed wire atop the wall when it gets knocked down, which he says is about every other month.

Developer Mort LaKretz wanted to give something back to the community, something that would benefit a group that helps the homeless. So he donated a $1-million motel, complete with a pool. LaKretz donated the 22-room Sky Terrace Motel, at Normandie Avenue and Washington Boulevard in South Los Angeles, to the Mental Health Assn. in Los Angeles County, a nonprofit organization that plans to renovate the rooms and turn them into apartments for homeless people who are disabled by mental illness.

There are lights that twinkle like stars on the rusty marquee of the old El Royale Motel, but nobody wishes on them. This isn't a place where dreams come true. Fantasies maybe, in the small rooms with mirrored ceilings and pornographic movies shown on televisions mounted high on the patched walls. But not dreams.

Employees of four motels along Sepulveda Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and Sepulveda were cited for renting rooms to prostitutes in an undercover sting operation that owners and managers characterized Thursday as unfair and dishonest. Los Angeles vice officers said they specifically told motel clerks that they were renting rooms to use with prostitutes, but some motel owners said their employees do not understand English well enough to know what the officers meant.

Police issued an appeal Monday for help in finding a man suspected of killing the night clerk of a Silver Lake motel during a robbery. Bayani Mascardo, 36, is being sought in the slaying of Tetsu Kusuma, 28, who was gunned down nine days ago at the Silver Lake Motel, said Rampart Station Detective Chuck Salazar. Mascardo worked as a security guard at the motel until eight months ago, Salazar said.

Two men were found shot to death Wednesday in a Crenshaw-area motel room, leaving investigators baffled about a motive, police said. The victims were identified by authorities as Malcolm Hardy, 20, and Shannon Lair, 24, both of Las Vegas. They were fully clothed and seated in a room in the Baldwin Hills Motor Inn, located in the 3000 block of South La Brea Avenue, police said. Los Angeles Police Sgt. Larry Kallestad said there was no sign of a struggle.