Redevelopment Splits Baldwin Park : Homeowners Seek to Scuttle Project, Recall Mayor, Councilmen

To Mayor Jack White, the Sierra Vista Redevelopment Project is a golden opportunity for his city to boost its image and its revenues.

In place of the motels, mobile home parks and auto repair centers currently strewn on both sides of the San Bernardino Freeway, he envisions rows of retail stores, beckoning shoppers with nationally known names.

But to many of White’s constituents, the project presents an ugly specter. They see it as sacrificing the rights of homeowners and small businessmen to the interests of developers and large corporations.

Instead of the promise of tax increment dollars, they see the threat of displacement, devaluation of their property and eminent domain.

The two views have clashed repeatedly since officials began studying the feasibility of the project--the city’s sixth and largest redevelopment venture--in February, 1985.

Twice last month, hundreds of residents packed public hearings, pleading with council members to spare their neighborhoods from redevelopment and chastising them for ignoring the will of the people.

On Wednesday, the council gave final approval to a scaled-down Sierra Vista project that covers 623 acres adjoining the freeway and excludes 1,500 homes originally included in the redevelopment area.

At the same time, residents groups began gearing up for petition drives that could force a special election next year, giving Baldwin Park voters a chance to scuttle the project and remove three council members from office.

Under the terms of the project, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) will float bonds for as much as $200 million to help finance commercial and industrial development in the hope of luring major stores and businesses to the area, according to John Hemer, the city’s director of Housing and Economic Development.

Economic Incentives

“One Gemco store could give us enough revenue to eliminate our utility tax,” White said.

“We can’t afford to let this prime freeway-corridor commercial land be used for things that aren’t going to serve the city,” White said. “If we just left it alone, a bunch of motels and apartments and other things would just perpetuate the blight.”

Resident Loren Lovejoy, like most other members of the Baldwin Park Homeowners Group, originally opposed the project because his home was within the redevelopment area, and he feared that it would be condemned--despite assurances by city officials that this would never happen.

Now, after having persuaded the council to remove their homes from the redevelopment area, Lovejoy and other group members are launching a referendum drive against the project because of their philosophical opposition to placing the city in debt to provide incentives for corporations.

‘Form of Corporate Socialism’

“We’re not against progress, we’re not against beautifying out city, but we feel free enterprise is the better way to go,” Lovejoy said.

“We feel the CRA is really a form of corporate socialism,” he said. “They are taking taxes to bribe big businesses to come in and buy property for much less than it is worth.

“They have all these utopian visions of all these beautiful buildings and all these jobs. They don’t realize that the time to pay the piper could be disastrous.”

Referendum proponents need to obtain 2,899 signatures of registered voters and submit them to the city by Oct. 28 to qualify the measure for the ballot, said City Clerk Linda Gair.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself Concerned Citizens for Better Government is circulating petitions to recall White and Councilmen Robert McNeill and Leo King, Gair said. Although the recall drive is officially intended to protest a 5% utility tax enacted by the council last year, recall proponents say they are also seeking to express discontent over the Sierra Vista project. McNeill and King both voted for the project.

If either measure qualifies, a special election will probably be held in the early part of next year, Gair said.

With popular sentiment now crucial to the existence of both the project and council members’ jobs, city officials and project foes have begun a campaign of sorts.

Each side accuses the other of misrepresenting the project and preying on the public’s ignorance of redevelopment law. Each group asserts that it represents the will of the people and charges that the opposition is dominated by outside interests.

‘Welfare System’ for Business

“What they (city officials) have done is confuse the residents so much. . . . I think the majority of citizens of Baldwin Park know nothing about redevelopment financing,” said Sherry Passmore of the Citizens Property Rights Committee, a Temple City-based group that she said fights redevelopment abuses on the state and local level.

“They’ve siphoned off millions from the general fund to these redevelopment projects,” Passmore said. “It looks like the projects are a success, but it’s all backed by city money. . . . Basically it’s turned into a welfare system for the business side.”

According to Hemer, redevelopment projects have almost doubled the city’s property tax revenues. The Sierra Vista project, he said, presents practically no threat to the city’s general fund.

“To date, the only risk the agency has taken is that development in the Sierra Vista project area will not occur and tax increment will not meet projections,” Hemer said.

Condemnation Fears

“If we didn’t believe the project would work and we didn’t have reason to believe it, we wouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “We don’t embark on these projects till we’re pretty damn sure they’re workable.”

White said the anti-redevelopment movement was born out of residents’ fears that they would not be compensated adequately if their homes are condemned for the project.

However, the city has never exercised eminent domain over a residence for redevelopment purposes, he said, and had no intention of doing so in the Sierra Vista project area.

“There were a lot of false rumors spread, a lot of unreal concerns,” White said.

‘Never in the Cards’

“It was never in the cards to clear out those areas,” White said. “There is a substantial amount of blight in that area, and if we had included that area in the project, we could have used CRA funds to improve that area. The people clearly didn’t want that. You just can’t shove it down their throats.”

“The City Council was planning to kick over 6,000 people out of their homes,” Lovejoy rejoined. “What they claim was done out of compassion was really done under the threat of a recall, a lawsuit and a referendum.”

Passmore said that although 1,500 homes were removed the redevelopment area, about another 1,500 residential units remain within the project on property that has been rezoned for commercial or industrial use.

Loss Through Zoning Change

Since their homes now represent a “non-conforming use” on the property, residents in the redevelopment area have little chance of receiving fair-market value for their property, she said.

However, Hemer promised that this type of property devaluation will not occur because the city no longer will consider residential property in commercial areas to be a “non-conforming use,” thus lowering its fair-market value.

When determining the price it will pay a homeowner for a house in the project area, the city will base its appraisal on the prices of comparable homes in residential areas, he said.

Another issue stressed by the project’s opponents is relocation. Residents of the project area, many of whom are poor or elderly, could be forced to move without adequate compensation for relocation costs, Passmore said.

‘Not Killing Them’

City officials say relocation is one of the prices of redevelopment.

“Yes, we anticipate that people will be moved,” Hemer said. “But we’re relocating them, we’re not killing them. We have a legal and moral obligation to satisfactorily relocate businesses and tenants.”

Hemer acknowledged that the low-income housing eliminated by the project will not be replaced immediately. However, he said state law requires that 20% of the increased tax revenue generated by redevelopment be placed in a fund for the construction of low- and moderate-income housing.

Besides its referendum effort, the Baldwin Park Homeowners Group says it has grounds for a lawsuit against the CRA for alleged violations of redevelopment law.

Inadequate Representation

Christopher Sutton, an attorney retained by the group, said the seven-member project area committee appointed by the agency to study the effects of the redevelopment plan included only two Baldwin Park residents, making it neither representative nor legal.

“A project area committee must protect the rights of homeowners and businessmen in the project area,” Sutton said. “What the city of Baldwin Park did was appoint a committee that wasn’t even a project area committee. . . . It was simply some developers and bankers who were going to make money on the project.”

The city was obligated to notify the residents of the affected neighborhoods about the committee’s formation and provide committee members with funds for office space, staff and legal counsel, Sutton said.

The committee appointed by the council to study the Sierra Vista project area featured two residents, two owners of local businesses, two developers and a representative of the Baldwin Park Unified School District, Gair said.

‘Grasping at Straws’

City Atty. Robert Flandrick dismissed the group’s claim that the committee’s composition violated the law as “nonsense” and said project opponents are “grasping at straws.”

“The committee we formed was perfectly legal,” Flandrick said.

In addition, he said, “we’re not obligated to give them a lawyer and an office and all that crap.”

Sutton said that a lawsuit only would be filed as a last resort if the referendum effort failed. In other cities where referendums on redevelopment projects have qualified for the ballot, council members often have canceled the projects to save the cost of special elections, he said.

Ready to Take the Chance

However, White said that the city will take its chances if the referendum makes it onto the ballot.

Estimating that the anti-redevelopment movement at its peak was composed of no more than 400 of Baldwin Park’s 50,000 residents, he said that opposition to the project now is virtually non-existent.

“I believe that people got pretty riled up about it, and an outside group came in that’s opposed to CRA in general, and they’ve kept fanning the flames,” he said. “I don’t think there are a great many citizens who are still against it.’

Passmore disagrees.

“I do not believe the majority of citizens of Baldwin Park are in favor of taking people’s homes or their businesses,” she said. “It does not give the city a good image if they are willing their elderly and their poor for tax increment money.”