Bassett

Citing lack of community interest, the Los Angeles County Community Redevelopment Agency has dropped plans to redevelop a 10-block area in the unincorporated community of Bassett. County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who announced the project’s cancellation late last month, said that low community attendance at a recent series of county Planning Commission hearings, where the plan was discussed, convinced him that redevelopment funds would be better invested in other areas of the 1st Supervisorial District.

“Naturally, we are happy,” said Richard Carman, president of the Better Government Assn. of Bassett, a 100-member organization of residents and business owners who opposed the project. But Carman disagreed with Schabarum that project was dropped because of a lack of community interest. Carman contended that Schabarum moved to kill the plan after residents elected an advisory committee composed mainly of people who were opposed to the project and the county Regional Planning Commission recommended that no unwilling property owners be included in the project.

About $5.1 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds has been spent on the project, with about of $3.1 million going to public improvements, most of them along Valley Boulevard. In addition to federal funds, $202,788 in county funds was paid out by the redevelopment agency for professional consulting services.

The 350-acre Valley Boulevard Redevelopment Project was intended to make street and other public improvements on the boulevard and to provide low-interest loans to businesses and homeowners within the project. The project also called for the eventual purchase by the county of residential properties for resale in further private commercial development.

Some area residents had been opposed to the Valley Boulevard Redevelopment Project since it was started 1982. The Better Government Assn. of Bassett filed a suit against the county last June to halt it. The associations’s members cited fears that their homes would be condemned and the property annexed by neighboring City of Industry. Spokesmen for Schabarum have said that the project was not designed to benefit Industry but to revitalize businesses in the Bassett area and to create jobs.

The association succeeded in halting the project in April when a Superior Court judge ruled that the county did not comply with state redevelopment law requiring that an advisory committee of area residents be elected. The judge ruled that the project could not proceed until residents within the project elected a new advisory committee. Carman contended that the first committee, appointed by Schabarum rather than being elected by residents, was dominated by business owners who favored the project.