Neighbors petition city over plan

Residents have gathered more than 200 signatures on a petition against a proposal to replace a nursery with an RV storage lot behind their houses, citing concerns about public safety and other issues.

Residents on Aragon Circle, a neighborhood near Yorktown Avenue and Ward Street, are trying to stop the Ward Garfield Specific Plan from being approved by the City Council. The proposal would turn a portion of land owned by Southern California Edison and used by the Village Nurseries Landscape Center into a storage lot with room for 557 recreational vehicles and a rental office.

The proposal has been twice postponed by the City Council and is expected to come back as a public hearing May 3.

Residents who live behind the nursery are worried the RV storage lot would create a fire hazard under the high-voltage electrical lines, lower property values, push coyotes into their neighborhoods and lower their quality of life.

The residents shouldn’t be concerned over the storage facility being a fire hazard, because the city wouldn’t allow the project if it was a public safety issue and Edison wouldn’t allow a use that would jeopardize its facility, said Wayne Carvalho, the representative for the applicant, Doc Rivers.

“We’re confident, and we feel if the city or Edison thought it was a [public safety] threat, they wouldn’t even let us apply,� he said.

The residents have collected more than 200 signatures in about a month, but they aren’t done yet, said Debbi Henigman, an 18-year resident of Aragon Circle who lives directly behind the nursery.

“While there is only eight of us that back against [the nursery], the whole neighborhood is against it,� she said.

From Henigman’s kitchen table, where she keeps the residents’ collection of information on the proposal — an aerial map of the neighborhood, copies of the petition and binders packed with information and research — she can see the nursery, or what could soon be RVs, through large windows.

One day, Henigman said, she will have her kitchen back, but now it is being used to fight the proposal. Tim Karpinski, a 20-year resident of Aragon Circle, said the grass-roots campaign has turned into a full-time job for the neighbors.

Taking on the proposed specific plan feels like going to battle, Karpinski said. Learning the ins and outs of City Hall and the terminology was a struggle in the beginning, Henigman said.

“This is what we’ve had to go through,� she said. “This is what we’ve been living.�

While residents are continuing their fight, the applicant is willing to make compromises with the neighbors, but Carvalho said he and Rivers feel they are at a point where the neighbors don’t want to compromise.

They are offering to reduce the number of stalls, leave a buffer zone between the residents’ properties and the RVs and landscape the grounds to hide the view from the residents’ homes. In the end, the project would impact eight residents, but Carvalho said an RV storage facility is a good use of the area.

“We think it’s a good dual use for this type of property,� he said.