Oakwood

The firm renovating the old Oakwood apartment complex, the largest such complex closed because of the Northridge earthquake, will hold a ceremony today marking the reopening of the apartments under a new name. After damage suffered during the 1994 temblor, the complex sat empty and untouched until Public Communications Services bought it in October 1997.

Residents from a Venice neighborhood synonymous with crack cocaine and violent death quietly banded together Saturday morning to plant life along one of their bloodier streets. Former gangbangers and resident millionaires worked side by side under rain-swollen skies, gingerly placing 40 ornamental pear saplings into the mud along Broadway Avenue, which slices through Venice's notorious Oakwood neighborhood.

Nearly four years after the Northridge earthquake, "keep out" signs and plywood sheets still cover the doors and windows of the 372-unit Oakwood apartment complex along Woodman Avenue. Inside the quake-battered building, former tenants' personal belongings and publications bearing dates just before the Jan. 17, 1994, temblor lay abandoned in the dark rooms and hallways.

On Venice's 6th Avenue between Santa Clara and California avenues is a beautifully maintained Craftsman-style house with lace curtains on the front door and a well-manicured landscape of drought-tolerant plants in the yard. Flowering vines frame a locked gate spanning the driveway. A block and a half away on the same street, a vacant one-story clapboard house has been marked by taggers and covered with "No Trespassing" signs.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved funds that will give the Oakwood Family Youth Center a project coordinator to help write grant proposals for nonprofit groups in the area. The center will house seven community organizations that provide employment training and family services in the neighborhood. A building that formerly housed the Venice library branch is being converted into the center, which is scheduled to open by the end of summer.

The bullets are flying again in Venice. The streets of its Oakwood district crackle in the late evenings when dusk settles over the small bungalows. Cars seem more menacing and children are yanked inside. The days aren't much better. It was, after all, early afternoon on April 4 when young Rafael Adan was gunned down in neighboring Mar Vista, the other community bracing itself after a recent onslaught of gang shootings in the area.

Oakwood residents and community leaders will participate in a rally for peace at noon today to protest gang warfare that has erupted in the Venice area. Four people have been killed and nine injured during the last two months as a mostly black gang from Oakwood engages in a deadly game of retaliation with a predominantly Latino gang based in Mar Vista.

As a 15-year resident of Oakwood, I have a few comments on your July 8 article. I defy anyone to point out a million-dollar home in Oakwood! Contrary to what was stated in the article about a lessening of gang activity, all one has to do is go to any street corner in central Oakwood to be solicited for drug sales. The writer is correct on one point, the crack and smack dealers in the area have gone back to business as usual by simply stopping their war. The rival gangs have joined forces for a common goal (uninterrupted drug sales)

Back when gang bullets ripped through Venice's Oakwood neighborhood, when gun battles raged between the V-13s and the Shoreline Crips, longtime residents dared not walk down the street or take their kids to the park. Even gang members found it too dangerous to stand outside to deal drugs in the neighborhood, which is roughly half a mile inland from Venice Beach. Nine unprecedented months of gang warfare--from fall 1993 until June 1994--left at least 17 dead and 55 wounded.

Murals depicting colorful jungle scenes seem to jump off the once-bland walls, and new trees and flowers have replaced dying shrubs--just two of the signs that Venice's Oakwood neighborhood is reclaiming its school. About 1,500 volunteers--parents, students, teachers, community activists--gave Broadway Elementary School a face lift last weekend.