Perseverance Pays

The Crenshaw Shopping Center, one of the first of its kind in the nation, is scheduled to get a new name, a new look and a major new tenant. The combination is a vote of confidence in that predominantly black section of Los Angeles, thanks to a successful partnership between the city and developer Alexander Haagen.

What will be known as the Baldwin Hills Regional Shopping Mall is now expected to include a new Sears department store when it opens in 1988. Sears will join the Broadway and the May Co., the original major tenants in 1948. The older stores plan major remodelings, part of the expanded mall’s new image. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency coordinates the $100-million project--financed with federal grants, bonds and other public money as well as major private investments from the retailers and Haagen.

When complete, the new mall could generate 1,000 new jobs, 300 new tenants, new tax dollars and another bonus--profits split between the developer and the city.

City Council President Pat Russell and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley have nursed the project through years of setbacks. They refused to give up when the city lost a major $12-million federal grant to help restore the center. They helped to put together a deal that beat, by hours, a deadline and saved the plan. They persisted when concern over an earthquake fault jeopardized the proposed mall, located on Crenshaw Boulevard between Stocker and Martin Luther King.

The new mall is not Haagen’s first private-public partnership. The Manhattan Beach developer helped put together the Martin Luther King Jr. Shopping Center. It opened in 1984, the first major shopping center built after the riots in a community abandoned by most major supermarkets and stores.

If the new stores attract profits and crowds from the 1 million potential shoppers who live within five miles of the mall, the private and public perseverance will pay off for the Crenshaw District and for Los Angeles.