Northwest Pasadena

Gripping plastic bags filled with milk, eggs and a two-liter bottle of orange soda, Itzel Hernandez made her way down Pasadena's Orange Grove Avenue one recent evening, keeping a brisk pace and wearing a gray hoodie to keep away the fall chill. Hernandez, 18, said she expected her trip home from Latino Market to take 25 minutes. The convenience store is the closest market to Hernandez's home. "Supermarkets aren't that far if you have a car, but I don't, so I have to walk," Hernandez said.

Gripping plastic bags filled with milk, eggs and a two-liter bottle of orange soda, Itzel Hernandez made her way down Pasadena's Orange Grove Avenue one recent evening, keeping a brisk pace and wearing a gray hoodie to keep away the fall chill. Hernandez, 18, said she expected her trip home from Latino Market to take 25 minutes. The convenience store is the closest market to Hernandez's home. "Supermarkets aren't that far if you have a car, but I don't, so I have to walk," Hernandez said.

The plan launched five years ago to revitalize the mostly minority neighborhoods of Northwest Pasadena has not been properly funded, and no substantive gains have been made, according to a report presented Tuesday to the Board of Directors by a city advisory committee.

There's a sign-in sheet at the door, with a note asking everyone to "Please limit yourself to one plate. " But nobody seems to be keeping track. Joslyn Wyatt went through the dinner line twice, loading up on tri-tip and rice as if she didn't know when she would eat again. She has been homeless, off and on, for eight years; a free hot meal is never a given. Helen Shen made more than one trip to the buffet too, but not because the meal was free. "This is very good food," Shen said, settling in between a scruffy, scar-faced stranger and her 92-year-old mother, who doesn't speak English but has learned to recognize good macaroni and cheese.

Pasadena's council chamber has long been a battleground, with Councilmen Isaac Richard, Rick Cole and others often slamming each other with verbal A-bombs. In contrast, the campaigns for four council seats up for grabs in the city's March 7 election have been cordial affairs so far, almost as proper as the annual coronation of the Rose Queen. "I think it reflects a feeling in Pasadena that things have been too ugly in recent years," said Cole, who is not seeking reelection.

Six people were appointed Tuesday to the newly created Northwest Commission, but City Directors turned down the appointment of Michael Zinzun, an activist who has filed a number of lawsuits against the city. Zinzun was nominated by Director William Paparian, who chastised the board for refusing to seat Zinzun and then nominated Manuel Valle, a Northwest Pasadena activist. Valle will be voted on by the board in January.

Contracts for sidewalk repairs, a new community center and a design for the Devil's Gate Multi-Use Project in the Arroyo Seco were approved Tuesday by the Board of Directors. Summit Builders was awarded $4.8 million to begin construction in November of the two-story, 41,300-square-foot Villa-Parke Community Center in Northwest Pasadena. Marina Contractors Inc. of Irvine received a $1.9-million contract to repair damaged concrete sidewalks in Northwest Pasadena. Work will begin in October.

Starting Sunday in the San Gabriel Valley section, The Times will begin an occasional, first-person series on one couple's unsettling experience searching for a house and settling in Northwest Pasadena, a gentrifying neighborhood. Staff writer Berkley Hudson and his wife, Milbre Burch, newcomers from New England, bought a house in January in an area not considered one of Pasadena's best addresses. But with residential real estate prices in Southern California among the highest in the nation, fewer than one in five families in Los Angeles County can afford to pay the median resale price of a single-family house.

I was very moved by the June 4 article called "Stranger at the Door" by Berkley Hudson. I too have felt uncomfortable at the plight of homeless people found all over, not just on Skid Row downtown any more. I have also wanted to help but have felt unsafe at times and needed to protect my children. Thank you for this most thought-provoking article and the personal touch offered by the occasional series on the gentrification of a Northwest Pasadena neighborhood. GAIL GAFFREY Temple City

Pasadena's council chamber has long been a battleground, with Councilmen Isaac Richard, Rick Cole and others often slamming each other with verbal A-bombs. In contrast, the campaigns for four council seats up for grabs in the city's March 7 election have been cordial affairs so far, almost as proper as the annual coronation of the Rose Queen. "I think it reflects a feeling in Pasadena that things have been too ugly in recent years," said Cole, who is not seeking reelection.

The early morning sun had yet to warm the gray stone walls of All Saints Episcopal Church. But inside a conference room, 15 members of the Coalition for a Non-Violent City steering committee sat at tables littered with empty plastic-foam coffee cups. They were 35 minutes into a full court press by Pasadena City Councilman Isaac Richard.

A middle-aged man hunches over the wall along the Orange Grove Boulevard side of the Rancho Super Market on Fair Oaks Avenue. He pauses for a moment and then vomits into the bushes and onto the sidewalk. It's about 1:30 on a hazy Wednesday afternoon. This is one of the sights on Eric McWilliams' guided tour of notorious booze-soaked spots in Northwest Pasadena--an area he grew up in and still patrols as a community relations police officer. There are many landmarks of trouble.

The Pasadena City Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a plan by developer and community activist Danny Bakewell to build a shopping center in Northwest Pasadena with the help of the city's redevelopment agency. City officials and representatives of Bakewell's Pasadena Commercial Development Co. will meet to work out a formal agreement, which will go back to the City Council for final approval.

Because owners of an Irwindale property made an irresistible offer, a major private employer in northwest Pasadena has elected to move, striking a blow to a state program to encourage business and jobs in that area. Ready Pac Produce, which employs more than 450 people in its plant on North Fair Oaks Avenue, will consolidate all of its facilities within three years at a 24-acre site now owned by a health care firm, a company official said this week.

Once more, it seems, Isaac Richard has 'em where he wants 'em. Everybody in Pasadena is wondering what the flamboyant city councilman--now in a desert medical facility being treated for an undisclosed "chemical imbalance"--will do next. Will he resign his seat in the face of allegations of sexual assault and cocaine use? Or will he come back to the council again to, by his own description, keep the pressure on the city's "racist" Establishment? Richard came under investigation last month after an unidentified woman banged on the doors of his neighbors on Forest Avenue, yelling that the councilman had tried to attack her sexually after using cocaine.

Your article glorifying Mr. Isaac Richard is deeply resented by many of the residents of this area. A good reporter carefully researches before writing such an article. Had you done so, you would realize the amount of damage your piece on Mr. Richard has done to the cause of getting this destructive man out of office. Don't take my word for this. After all, I'm white. Interview the black leaders in Northwest Pasadena and learn how hateful, racist and mean this man is. Talk to the police officers who put their lives on the line up in Richard's district and find out how he tries to block their efforts.