Monrovia Neighborhood Receives Fitting Recognition

By Susan Motander
Last summer, the area around the corner of Los Angeles and Sherman Avenues in Monrovia was designated as a Neighborhood of the Year 2011 by Neighborhood USA. This is a distinct honor as only four such neighborhoods were so recognized by NUSA. Ten signs designating that distinction were finally erected this week and were unveiled at a brief ceremony last Tuesday.
Monrovia Mayor Mary Ann Lutz (with the assistance of the Council’s Tallest Member, Tom Adams) unveiled one of ten signs which acknowledge the neighborhood’s distinction. She praised the efforts of the community to turn itself around.
The designation as a Neighborhood of the Year coming to Monrovia is especially exciting as the other such distinctions went to much larger cities, Long Beach, California and Fort Worth, Texas. “This is a little
like the mouse who roared,” said Monrovia’s Dan McConnell.
McConnell, who oversees the Monrovia Area Partnership Program for the city also spoke at the unveiling. He called out the names of the individuals who had worked to change the neighborhood praising the clean up programs and community events they had planned. He also noted that many of them had gone through the city’s leadership academy and that one such academy graduate, Larry Spicer, now sat on the City Council.
It is important to remember what this neighborhood had been only a few years ago. Gangs terrorized the residents. Drive-by shoots were not uncommon and a murder had been committed there.
“Last summer this community held a neighborhood potluck and movie night at the corner of Los Angeles and Sherman,” McConnell said. “I stood out there at ten o’clock at night with the residents that evening and was struck by the fact that just a few years before they would have been afraid to be outside their homes at that time of night.
“The residents turned that neighborhood around,” he said.