ELYSIAN PARK : Decision on Firm’s Warehouse Delayed

Some Elysian Park-area residents won a reprieve in their five-year battle against a coffee service company last week when the City Council postponed a decision on the company’s proposal to build a warehouse complex nearby.

The council agreed to wait until after its four newly elected members take office July 1.

Prodded by Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the area, the council voted June 15 to delay the decision 30 days. That will give the new council enough time to view the proposal by the Secretary Coffee Service.

The warehouses would be used as a distribution center for Secretary, a Downey-based company that supplies filters, machines, coffee and other related items to commercial offices.

The delay was good news for the three citizens groups in the area, whose members hope the four new representatives will be receptive to their cause for a more controlled development.

“The important thing is that we have four new people on the council, not the jaded group we’ve been dealing with,” said Sallie Neubauer, president of the Citizen’s Committee to Save Elysian Park.

Along with Neubauer’s group, the members of Elysian Valley Resident’s Assn. and Echo Park Renters and Homeowners’ Assn. say the project, consisting of five proposed buildings on Riverside Drive, is too big and too close to the park entrance at Stadium Way. What’s more, Neubauer said, the project is incompatible with the residential area it would abut.

But a smaller project is not financially feasible, said Tom Stemnock, president of Engineering Technology Inc., which is representing the property owners.

“We’ve waited five years, and it just goes on and on,” Stemnock said of the battle with the neighborhood groups. “They just don’t like to have large development in the Silver Lake area.”

The latest project proposal calls for 9.5 acres to be used for 127,000 square feet of warehouse space and 14,000 square feet of office space.

The plans have already been approved by the city Planning Commission and the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee.