Realty Agent Carries On Renovation Efforts in Honor of Late Partner

HIGHLAND PARK —  Five years ago, Gus DiClairo approached his best friend and proposed that they open a real estate company together.

His idea wasn’t the simple quest for profits that characterizes many people in his business. It was to bring buyers to Highland Park who would restore its deteriorating old homes, many of which are architecturally significant but in various states of decline.

The friend, Bill Raftery, said he would have been skeptical had anyone else proposed opening a real estate company with the motto “principles before profit.” But with DiClairo at the helm, Raftery felt the venture could not fail.

“I knew that if Gus was behind it, he would not stop until it succeeded,” Raftery said. “He was a Pied Piper, and he could get people to follow him.”

The two men left the real estate office where they worked, and Uptown Properties was born.

Last month, DiClairo, 48, died of complications from AIDS, less than a year after the death of his longtime lover, George Eisenberg Lawrence. But Uptown Properties and his vision of Highland Park as a thriving, economically integrated community of single-family homes will not be forgotten, his partner said.

“There’s a moral imperative to keep this kind of real estate alive,” said Raftery, who will become the full owner of Uptown when DiClairo’s estate closes. “The dream will not die.”

Through Uptown Properties, DiClairo worked to focus the attention of preservation-minded home buyers on Highland Park, portraying it as a community where they could buy neat old houses at a low price--if they were willing to do some work.

“At a time when Highland Park was regarded as an insignificant backwater, he recognized the value and beauty of the intact housing stock,” community activist Diana Barnwell said. “But preservation does not happen without economic investment, so he went to the yuppies of the more affluent communities.”

By many accounts, the effort was a success.

“We’ve had a number of homes saved by Uptown customers,” said Charlie Fisher of the Highland Park Heritage Trust, an organization dedicated to historic preservation. “They have shown that people can come in, buy these older homes and make something of it, that there are alternatives to demolition that are profitable.”

Now, other real estate firms in the community have also begun selling homes with an eye toward restoration, Fisher said.

But friends and associates say DiClairo’s legacy to the community went beyond business. With his jovial laugh and his optimistic, can-do spirit, the native New Yorker undertook many other projects to spruce up the community that became his adopted home.

In the 1970s, they say, he led midnight tree-planting raids on city land, planting native trees that were not on the city’s “approved” street tree list. DiClairo restored many houses on his own and with Raftery--including the Yoacum House, which is a city cultural-historic monument.

Long before graffiti was a cause celebre, DiClairo held yard sale fund-raisers to buy paint for covering graffiti, said Shirley Minser, a field deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre.

He was also active in community organizations such as Northeast Trees and Northeast Beautiful, which are dedicated to sprucing up the community, and he founded the Uptown Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

When the Highland Park Neighborhood Assn. was formed, DiClairo paid for a separate phone line for the association to be installed in the Uptown offices. He regularly appeared at city hearings to testify on matters affecting Highland Park.

Despite his contributions, DiClairo had to battle prejudice about his homosexuality. When DiClairo was installed as the president of the Northeast Realty Board, the editor of a local newspaper called to make sure that he did not intend to show up at the event in drag, Raftery said.

“He had a tough skin for the public, but he was very vulnerable to petty criticism and the callous anti-gay sentiment,” Raftery said. “You do all this work in the community and then people focus on their prejudices instead of your accomplishments.”

But among most community activists, DiClairo was well respected for his unflagging dedication to Highland Park and his ability to rally enthusiasm for community improvement projects.

“Language fails to communicate the kind of magic this man had,” Raftery said.