2 Communities Take Greatly Differing Paths : Fontana, Left for Dead After Kaiser Mill Closed, Shows Strong Signs of Life

Left for dead when Kaiser closed its huge steel mill at the end of 1983, the city of Fontana has made a strong comeback.

“Nobody expected what’s been happening here,” Mayor Nathan Simon said. “When Kaiser closed, everybody thought the town was going to go kaput, but that hasn’t happened.”

Instead, Fontana’s low land costs have attracted many residential developers. New housing tracts are springing up all over the city, especially in North Fontana, a 14-square-mile area annexed by the city in 1982.

Simon predicted that 50,000 to 75,000 people will live in North Fontana by the turn of the century and that the city’s total population will approach 150,000 by the year 2010.

New industries have moved to town--a company that makes safes, another that manufactures plastic pipe and fittings, a third that makes packing materials.

Bumper stickers bearing the slogan “Fontana, CA., Welcomes Industry” are carried nationwide by vehicles belonging to the 132 trucking companies based in Fontana.

California Steel Industries Inc., a partnership that includes an American company, a Japanese firm and the Brazilian government, bought some of the Kaiser Steel Corp. land and facilities and now produces steel coil and other finished products with a work force of about 600.

California Steel would like to resume steel manufacturing, but federal and state air-pollution regulations may make that impossible.

Kaiser, which remains a landowner in the area, and Southern Pacific Railroad have plans for new industrial parks.

The city plans to buy the deserted United Steelworkers of America union hall and turn it into a cultural center.

Some problems remain. North Fontana cannot be fully developed until inadequate sewage and flood-control facilities are improved and a way is found to bring water into the area at reasonable rates.

Reputation for Racism

Mayor Simon is confident that solutions will be found for these problems, but he is less certain that the city can overcome its reputation for racism.

For years the Ku Klux Klan has been active in Fontana, seeking as recently as 1983 to distribute literature in the schools, offering its services to the local police, occasionally marching through town.

Simon insisted that the group has never numbered more than two dozen and has almost ceased its activities.

However, the city’s reputation received another rude jolt last October, when Sazon Davis, a 20-year-old black, was left paralyzed from the chest down after a run-in with three white teen-agers on Fontana’s main street.

Black Community Incensed

The city’s small black community was incensed when the San Bernardino County district attorney refused to prosecute the white teen-agers and when it was learned that the mother of one of the boys was a dispatcher for the Fontana Police Department.

The mayor has tried to repair the damage, meeting with irate citizens and moving to establish a rumor-control center and a community relations commission.

“Image has been our main problem,” said Neil Stone, Fontana’s director of community development, “but it’s changing. It’s improving.”

FONTANA Incorporated 1952 Size 35 square miles Population 49,100 Median household income $18,278 Taxable Sales $192,265,000 (April 1983-March 1984) New residential units, 1984 510