Is It Just a Carwash? Or Is It . . . : THE GATEWAY TO STUDIO CITY

Proving that the car is still king in the San Fernando Valley, residents of Studio City demanded Wednesday that a neighborhood carwash be declared an official Los Angeles “cultural monument.”

Homeowners said such a designation will effectively prevent a developer from demolishing a popular 60-year-old gas station to make way for a new mini-mall.

The Los Angeles city Cultural Heritage Commission voted 3 to 0 to order a temporary halt to the shopping center project until members can investigate claims that the boomerang-topped carwash forms “the Gateway to Studio City.”

The 1950s-style carwash is part of a Unocal service station on the southeast corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon boulevards that has pumped gasoline since 1929.

Developer Ira Smedra angered homeowners last week by announcing that he has purchased the gas station and carwash site and that he intends to demolish them late this summer to make way for a $15-million, two-story shopping center.

But on Tuesday, gas station operator Pat Galati learned from telephone company workers who showed up to disconnect his phones that Smedra planned to tear down the station and the carwash by May 31.

Galati persuaded the linemen to leave his phone hooked up. He used it to call neighbors and spread the news.

The cultural monument application was filed Tuesday afternoon. Residents hopped into their cars Wednesday morning to rush to the commission’s twice-monthly meeting to argue their case.

“We in the Valley want to retain some of our culture and heritage,” said Jack McGrath, a political consultant and former City Council candidate who launched the save-the-carwash campaign. “We have very few cultural monuments in the San Fernando Valley.”

McGrath acknowledged that “it’s in the eye of the beholder what is a cultural or historical monument.” But he asserted that the 28-year-old carwash “is the landmark of the San Fernando Valley on the east.”

Studio City resident Jerry Hays, a one-time gas station operator, complained that developers are “rushing to rip out all of our roots, all of our history.

“This is not just a Valley issue. It’s a city issue.”

Smedra, who was reported to be out of the state Wednesday, was unrepresented at the commission hearing. Employees of his Los Angeles-based development company had no comment afterward.

But commission President Amarjit S. Marwah said the carwash--built around three 55-foot-tall arched steel girders

shaped like boomerangs--”definitely meets some of the criteria” established by the city for cultural monuments.

He said no carwash has ever been nominated before as a historical or cultural site, although an old-time Brentwood gas station received monument status a few months ago.

Marwah said his panel will visit the Valley site “and perhaps have lunch at Tiny Naylor’s,” a 1950s-looking coffee shop that shares the Studio City corner with Galanti’s carwash and gas station.

He said that if the commission votes for the cultural designation and the City Council concurs, as it does “for 99% of our recommendations,” demolition would be stalled at least 12 months, the current term of such designations, or as long as five years, if the City Council acts on a proposed ordinance change to extend the term.

McGrath and Galati said that will give the community time to try to persuade Smedra to redesign his mini-mall so that the corner retains its 1950s look, its Tiny Naylor’s and its automotive services. Tiny Naylor’s and the carwash and gas station take up about half of Smedra’s parcel.

At the carwash Wednesday, customers who had lined up for Galati’s weekly $3.75 wash and wax special said they support whatever can be done to save the suds.

“But I don’t think of a carwash when I think of the ‘Gateway to Studio City,’ ” said Karen Crawford, a development assistant at nearby MTM Studios.

“It’s not a cultural monument,” said William Griffis, a television actor who lives in Studio City. “But it certainly is a handy place to get your car washed.”