L.A. Prepares to Act on Years of Complaints : Laurel Canyon Loitering Spot May Be Closed

Every night Anthony Silver and his guard dog, Socrates, watch the cars roar past their home and climb a steep, brush-lined street called Percival Place, which ends high in a rocky ravine in Laurel Canyon.

At a secluded cul-de-sac about 100 yards up the hill from Silver’s residence, carousers gather to smoke, drink beer, sell drugs and engage in sex, he said.

The short street has become a bane to Silver and other residents who live below it on busy, rustic Laurel Canyon Boulevard. It contains no homes or buildings of its own and the cul-de-sac is largely hidden from view, making it a popular day-and-night gathering place for teen-age lovers, gays, prostitutes and drug dealers, according to Silver.

Loud noises and racing car engines echo through the ravine well into the wee hours, he said. Revelers and trash dumpers leave Percival Place littered with broken furniture, smashed beer bottles, lawn trimmings, paper, drug ampules and hypodermic needles. Cabs climb the street for no apparent reason, other than to transport prostitutes and drug dealers, Silver said.

The commotion keeps Socrates barking and leaping against the backyard fence, Silver said. No one is philosophical about the extent of the problem.

“Basically, you can go up there and do anything you want,” said David Hanan, 60, a free-lance animation artist who lives at Percival Place and Laurel Canyon Boulevard. “But I don’t want to go through there with my 5-year-old granddaughter and see two men, or a man and a woman, engaged in some carnal act.”

Breaking Bottles

Silver, a 25-year-old shopkeeper who recently bought a home nearby, said the partying goes on every night. “You can see them up there breaking bottles all the time,” he said. “You see them up there lighting cigarettes. I’m concerned they’re going to burn down the whole hillside.”

In fact, there is almost nothing redeeming about the street, said Jack Freeman, who has lived in Laurel Canyon for 13 years. Even the hillside above is a problem: It’s a troublesome slide area that rains down rocks and boulders. They hit the street and sometimes tumble all the way down to Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

“It’s like a bowling alley,” Freeman said. “How they miss (the cars) I don’t know.”

Soon, however, Percival Place may be a gathering spot no longer. Acting on years of public complaints, Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo and the city’s Public Works Department have unveiled plans to remove the street from public access, closing it off with a chain-link fence and a locked gate.

The proposal is scheduled for City Council action later this month. It was developed after a review of the complaints by Woo, who was elected last year, and a visit to the neighborhood by Public Works engineer Harry Sawada.

Sawada reported substantial evidence of the problems. On the day of his visit, in May, two large rocks sat squarely in the road, the largest about two feet in diameter. Trash was everywhere.

“It looked like a truck had dumped it,” Sawada said.

Notorious for Parties

Officers from the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said the area is not plagued by unusual amounts of crime, but one described the street as notorious for its teen-age party-goers.

“Every kid in the world probably knows about it,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified. “People go up there and they figure, ‘We’ve got a spot where no one will bother us.’ But then they leave their radios on loud at 2 o’clock in the morning. I could see where it would be a nuisance.”

Hanan, who said he has spent 10 years “raising hell” to try to clean up the street, said city efforts to increase patrols and to remove debris have resulted in only sporadic improvements. Recently the problems have worsened, he said.

His home has been burglarized twice in recent years, possibly by loiterers who know when he is not at home, Hanan said. In 1975, he lost a Navajo rug valued at about $8,000. In 1983, he lost about $2,000 in household appliances.

A lot of strange things happen up there,” Freeman said. “It’s really a problem.”

Mystery to Some

Why Percival Place exists in the first place is a mystery to some residents. When it was opened, in 1926, the cul-de-sac was expected to be part of the affluent Laurel Canyon residential community. But the paved road was never developed, almost certainly because of the steep slopes that surround it, Sawada said.

“It’s hard to get a driveway in up there,” he said.

Hanan, who owns two vacant parcels on Percival Place, insists that someday the land will be developed and the street will become much like any other. Property owners continue to pay taxes on their parcels and do not want the street permanently closed, he said.

But in the meantime, Hanan said, the proposed fence and gate are the only ways to keep the loiterers away.

The proposed fence and gate, however, are exactly what nearby homeowners have needed.

“It’s just a matter of closing it off,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal.”