Greenery defines the Manchester Square area near LAX. Century Blvd. at bottom, 405 Freeway at right. (Credit: Google Maps)
In 2010, I wrote about the Surfridge development between the western end of LAX and Vista del Mar, now a ghost town of weed-overgrown streets and empty house foundations.
Today, we’ll look at Manchester Square, a 120-acre housing tract located roughly a mile east of LAX on the other, inland side of the airport. It too has taken on an air of desolation, though its future use is more clearly defined.
There are many more empty lots than structures on the Manchester Square property near LAX. (March 2019 photo by Sam Gnerre)
Not to be confused with the Manchester Square area of South Los Angeles just east of Inglewood, this development was one of many similar ones that sprang up following the end of World War II.
This Manchester Square is bounded by La Cienega and Aviation boulevards on the east and west, and W. Arbor Vitae St. and Century Blvd. on the north and south. Like many South Bay housing tracts, it began as a planned development in the late 1940s, part of the mammoth postwar residential building boom.
The first 119 original houses were duplexes, featuring two two-bedroom homes in each module. Each individual unit cost $14,000, according to the June 1949 Liberty Building Company ad in the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times ad, June 5, 1949. Page E5. (Credit: Los Angeles Times archival database)
Manchester Square stands smack in the middle of on of the busiest traffic corridors in the city. Thousands of airport-bound cars pass it by on Century every day, but two large hotels and several other businesses fronting on Century hide the area from view.
But at the time it was originally built, the Los Angeles Municipal Airport (originally known as Mines Field) had only recently — Oct. 11, 1949 — been renamed Los Angeles International Airport after being selected as the city’s official aviation center. It was nowhere near the LAX of today in size.
The Manchester Square development proved popular. By 1951, it had its own school, the 98th Street Elementary School, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. In later years, apartment complexes were also built on the property in addition to houses.
An abandoned apartment house on the Manchester Square property. (March 2019 photo by Sam Gnerre)
But as the airport and the surrounding area continued to develop, residents found life in their pleasant little enclave growing less and less attractive.
The combination of incessant noise from increasing jet traffic, more automobile traffic with each airport expansion and the attendant rise in crime with the growing amount of people frequenting the area had caused many residents to reconsider.
Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the city agency responsible for managing the airport, began rerouting jet aircraft over Manchester Square in the mid-1990s.
It offered to soundproof the homes below, but some residents began opting instead for LAWA’s buyout program. Home purchases already had been offered to residents of other areas in the flight path, not just in the Surfridge development, but in affected zones in Westchester and Inglewood.
Debris from a razed house on the Manchester Square property. (March 2019 photo by Sam Gnerre)
LAWA began moving toward buyouts after it judged that the cost of buying out residents would be lower overall than the cost of soundproofing all the affected homes.
Some homeowners in Manchester Square began to take the buyouts from LAWA, and more joined them when James Hahn, then mayor of Los Angeles, announced a plan in 1997 to take back the area using eminent domain for use as a massive passenger check-in center as part of a new plan to modernize LAX and reduce traffic. (Passengers would use a people-mover to get from the center to the terminals.)
The buyout program was approved officially in 1999. More and more empty lots began to appear in the neighborhood. Between 1998 and 2004, population in the area dropped from 7,100 to about 4,000. Enrollment at 98th Street Elementary fell to 235 students, and LAUSD closed the school on June 17, 2004.
The buyouts continued even after Hahn’s plan stalled in 2004 when it was deemed to be impractical. Even with no firm plans for the land, LAWA continued the homebuying program, and the Manchester Square area really began to take on a ghost town aura, as well as attracting a sizable homeless population.
2018 map of the LAMP project at LAX. The new rental car facility is at right, in orange. Click to enlarge image. (Credit: LAWA)
It would be ten years until a concrete plan for the Manchester Square property would surface. In 2014, LAWA, after much discussion, submitted its long-awaited $4 billion proposal to modernize LAX.
The Landside Access Modernization Program (LAMP) was introduced formally in March 2014. In addition to traffic improvements, a new people-mover train and an offsite check-in facility on the current site of Parking Lot C, LAMP also included plans for ConRAC, the Consolidated Rent-A-Car facility. Under the plan, ConRAC would occupy the Manchester Square property.
The Board of Airport Commissioners approved the entire plan in December 2014. As of June 2017, the city had spent nearly $400 million to buy more than 500 properties in the Manchester Square and nearby Belford areas, with efforts continuing to acquire the remaining 37.
Artist rendition of the proposed ConRAC rental car facility, looking southeast from intersection of Arbor Vitae St. and Aviation Blvd. (Credit: LAWA)
LAWA officials expect to break ground for the rental car center later this year, with the building scheduled to become operational in 2023.
The two private charter schools that currently operate on the old 96th Street Elementary site will close at the end of the current school year to make way for construction.
As for the homeless population, they also will have to move on when building begins. Authorities have already cleared out a motor home encampment that had grown to more than 50 vehicles in 2017.
Soon enough, a 5.3-million-square-foot rental car facility housing at least 20 different agencies will occupy a new building on the now nearly deserted site, and the innumerable rental car shuttles crowding roadways near the LAX terminals will become a thing of the past. As will Manchester Square.
Empty apartment buildings and graffiti-covered walls are part of the current Manchester Square landscape. (March 2019 photo by Sam Gnerre)
Sources:
Daily Breeze files.
Los Angeles Times files, including “Last School Year on the Flight Path,” by Cara Mia DiMassa, June 13, 2004.
Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) official website.
Release of final Request for Proposals: Consolidated Rental Car Facility at LAX, Los Angeles World Airports, 2018.
“This L.A. Neighborhood Will Soon Be Wiped Off the Map,” by Hillel Aron, Los Angeles magazine website, Sept. 4, 2018.
Artist rendition of the main entrance to the proposed ConRAC rental care facility. Note elevated people-mover train. (Credit: LAWA)
