By Nick Diamantides
Staff Writer
The ongoing dispute between two neighborhood associations as to which one is the lawful owner of the Christmas Tree Lane (CTL) displays has finally turned into a lawsuit. About two weeks ago, the Wrigley Area Neighborhood Alliance (WANA) filed the suit against the Wrigley Association and four of its directors.
The lawsuit was expected because efforts to mediate the dispute had failed and leaders of each group had blamed the opposing association of refusing to discuss the matter amicably.
The animosity between the two organizations began about two years ago when a slim majority of Wrigley board members voted to separate the Wrigley Association bank account from the CTL account. Descriptions of what that action entailed vary, but at that point, some of the Wrigley Association board members broke away and formed WANA, primarily to ensure that the CTL displays would continue to be set up on Daisy Avenue every December as they have been since the early 1950s.
The two groups have been at odds ever since. Last year, the City of Long Beach, which had been storing the displays in a Port of Long Beach warehouse for many years, issued a statement declaring that the city did not own the displays. Soon afterwards, the two associations began verbally wrangling over which one of them had the right to claim ownership of the displays. With the city’s permission, WANA removed the displays from the port warehouse and began storing them at an undisclosed location. Wrigley board members threatened to sue WANA over that possession, but the two groups agreed to bury the hatchet until after Christmas.
WANA volunteers set up the displays on Daisy Avenue in December and were supposed to put them back in storage after the Christmas season. However, the organization was unable to store them at the previous location and could not find a place suitable for storage. As a result, the displays remained on Daisy Avenue for about two months after Christmas.
In early March, the Wrigley Association sent work crews and a truck to Daisy Avenue to remove the displays. When WANA members found out about it, they also got a truck and began removing the displays. Police were called to Daisy Avenue to ensure peace, and the city attorney’s office declared that, since legal ownership had not yet been established, both groups could remove the displays.
A few weeks later, the Wrigley Association offered to sell the displays it had in its possession to WANA, but WANA board members refused the offer, insisting that Wrigley did not own the displays and therefore had no right to sell them. “I am not going to pay anybody $1,000 for something they do not own,” said Jill Hill, WANA president. “It just has finally come to the point where this issue can only be resolved by the court.”
Annie Greenfeld, Wrigley Association president, said she was confident that the court would declare that her organization is the rightful owner of the displays. “We have bank statements and checks which support our claim to ownership,” Greenfeld said. She explained that the records, going back to 1997, show that the Wrigley Association spent a lot of money repairing and refurbishing the displays.
Hill, however, insisted that the bank statements and checks do not prove that Wrigley ever owned the displays. “Carpenters who were employees of the city built the displays, the city stored them on its property, and for many years city employees set up the displays on Daisy Avenue,” Hill said. “During all those years, everybody knew that the city owned the displays.”
Greenfeld countered. “The city does not own the displays and they say they never have,” she said.
Hill acknowledged that a few months ago the city declared that it did not own the displays, but she said that statement was not based on historical fact. “Because of potential liability and because of the dispute between WANA and Wrigley, the city just does not want to admit that it owned them,” she said.
The case is scheduled to be heard in Long Beach Superior Court on May 29. WANA has also obtained a court order prohibiting the Wrigley Association from selling the displays until the court issues a ruling on the case.
Attorneys for the two associations declined comment.
