THE CHANGING FACE OF SOUTH BAY : DOWNTOWNS

“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely,

you can always go--DOWNTOWN.

When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry seems

to help, I know--DOWNTOWN.

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city,

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty . . . .

How can you lose?

--From “Downtown,” by Tony Hatch, made popular by singer Petula Clark.

1964, Welbeck Music Ltd., London

Albert Isen remembers old downtown Torrance.

Now 79, he recalls a time when the tiny business district was surrounded by open fields as far as he could see “and the weeds sometimes grew as high as the farmhouses.”

His father, Jacob, started the town’s first grocery in 1912, adding to the cluster of businesses already established by the pioneering Dominguez Land Co. to serve the area’s growing population.

“I can remember as a small kid watching them build the hotel, brick by brick, and thinking what a big town this would be some day,” said Isen, who would eventually become its mayor.

And, just as he predicted, Torrance did grow into a big town. Through the early decades of the century and into the postwar years, the farm fields and ranches steadily gave way to homes and industries. A network of railroad lines and Red Car trolleys brought customers into town from a wide area.

Community’s Crossroads

Streets like Cravens, Post, El Prado and Marcelina, with their growing array of stores, offices and hotels, became known as “Downtown.” It was the crossroads of the community, the center of transportation, commerce and government.

Business with the government was conducted at city hall. Lawbreakers were housed in an adjoining jail. People visited their dentist, doctor or lawyer downtown, and bought food, clothes and other provisions from the stores.

When people spoke of Torrance, they usually meant downtown. It gave identity to the community. “It really was the heart of the city,” said Isen, a retired attorney who served as a councilman and mayor from 1955 to 1970. “It was the place to hold parades. You went there to do your business, or just to walk around and say hello to your friends. And it was always so quiet and friendly.”

Torrance’s old downtown, and many others in the South Bay and throughout the country, are still quiet and friendly.

But very few are still the heart of their cities. And they don’t hold many parades there any more.

The parades, along with the customers who once thronged the historic streets, have moved on. You see them now at the new centers of business and community activity that have risen from the sprawl created by decades of expansion from the original core cities.

Shopping Malls Prosper

The unchallenged centers of retail business now are the regional shopping malls. They are the new downtowns for millions of shoppers enticed by acres of free parking, a carefully designed ambiance of spacious luxury and comfort, and a seemingly endless variety and abundance of goods.

Increased mobility and the advent of freeways made it easier for shoppers to reach the new retailing meccas, releasing “captive markets,” as one planner said. And decisions such as where a freeway off-ramp would be located had devastating impact on some downtown areas of the South Bay.

Last year, about 25,000 malls built since the mid-1950s accounted for an estimated 52% of the nation’s retail sales, or about $300 billion.

Much of the business left over goes to the commercial strips and mini-malls springing up on street corners and thoroughfares everywhere.

Many of downtown’s traditional tenants have departed, too. Dentists, lawyers and other professionals who once hung their shingles from second-story windows in old downtown now do business in distant office towers and medical complexes.

Vitality Drained

Small manufacturers, distributors and other enterprises that once considered a downtown address vital to their success have departed to new industrial and business parks. The flight of customers and tenants left most traditional downtowns drained of vitality. With its seedy streets, sparse parking and drab, aging buildings, the typical old downtown became the bag lady of today’s marketplace.

“The decay of the original downtown is an image that can be seen in cities and towns across the country,” said Ken Topping, Los Angeles’ city planning director. “When business goes elsewhere, the merchants left behind are faced with a fight for survival . . . and for many, it’s been a losing struggle.”

But Topping and other urban planners say few cities are writing off their downtowns as a lost cause. And for good reasons:

- A dying business district becomes a core of blight that spreads through surrounding neighborhoods and may, if not checked, spread decay through other parts of the city.

- Some cities, especially smaller ones that have not attracted malls or other new business, are heavily dependent on their downtowns for tax revenues.

- Downtowns represent heavy past investments in buildings, streets and utilities that cannot be written off unless there are some mighty attractive alternatives.

- Downtowns, in varying degrees, have historical and architectural assets worth preserving.

- Residents near downtown, particularly the poor and elderly, may rely on the stores as their primary, and sometimes only, source of goods and services.

In the South Bay and elsewhere, efforts to revitalize downtowns have ranged from modest self-help programs to refurbish storefronts and spruce up streets to massive redevelopment projects, and the results so far have been mixed--few outright failures, a little headway, and occasionally an impressive success story.

Success Stories

Traditional downtowns in El Segundo and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula may be the closest versions to a success story in the South Bay. Others are still doing a lot of struggling and hoping.

Nationally, several hundred cities hoping to get their downtowns on the comeback trail have turned to a “Main Street” rejuvenation plan developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C.

California will launch its version of the plan in 1987 with pilot projects in five cities. Hermosa Beach is the only South Bay city so far that plans to participate next year.

Key elements of success, the Washington group says, are communitywide interest and support, creation of an attractive and lively shopping environment with a “special image” based on downtown’s historical and architectural features, a careful balance of goods and services not generally available in the malls, and coordinated promotional efforts by the merchants.

The Main Street programs generally provide advice and guidance, but leave it up to the cities to rally financial and other support for their rejuvenation efforts. Each participating city is expect to hire its own full-time program manager to keep things moving.

Hardly anyone believes that downtowns, in anything like their present form, can ever regain their traditional position as a community-wide center, but urban planners say most downtowns can find a new--if much smaller--niche in today’s marketplace.

The Traditional Core of the City

In the South Bay, nine communities have what planners consider a traditional downtown--a business district that was once the core of the city’s economic and social life.

They are Torrance, Inglewood, El Segundo, San Pedro, Wilmington, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Malaga Cove in Palos Verdes Estates on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

In four other cities--Hawthorne, Lawndale, Lomita and Carson--no single district can be readily identified as downtown, but rather business has spread among several areas or along commercial strips.

Even further from having a traditional downtown are the largely residential Peninsula cities of Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Rolling Hills.

Redondo Beach had a traditional downtown once, but demolished it in the 1960s and filled the space with condominiums.

Here is how the South Bay’s downtowns are doing and what the future may hold for them:

Inglewood perhaps holds the most prominent position in the history and development of South Bay commerce. In the 19th Century farmers and ranchers from a wide area gathered along what is now Market Street to barter and sell their wares.

Commercial Hub

In more recent times, the addition of such major outlets as Sears, J. C. Penney and the Boston Store increased the drawing power of Market Street, helping make it the major hub of commerce in the South Bay.

Then the mall developers arrived on the scene in the late 1960s. They wanted to build a big one in the south end of town, but Market Street merchants, fearing that a nearby mall would hurt their prosperity, opposed it.

The mall developers went elsewhere and Inglewood got the Forum on the site instead.

“It was our last chance to get a major mall,” City Manager Paul Eckles said. “After that, we just didn’t have the kind of available space required for a project like that, even though market studies continue to show that a mall would do well here.”

By the early 1970s, the malls ringing Inglewood had reduced Market Street to a virtual ghost town. Eckles recalls a time when half of the stores were offered for rent, with few takers. Others described scenes of rampant crime and vandalism.

“Downtown became a place where hoodlums would hang around on street corners and scare customers away from the few businesses that were still open,” said Darlene McDonald, a former Inglewood resident.

In Inglewood and other cities, the exodus of customers to the new shopping meccas coincided with massive population shifts as minorities began to integrate into the mainstream of society.

85% Minority

Inglewood, which had been a virtually all-white, middle-class bedroom community, became predominantly black by the end of the 1970s, and new waves of Latino and other immigrants since then have increased the minority population to 85%, according to city estimates.

Eckles says that fundamental changes in marketing spearheaded by the malls, rather than population changes, brought on the decline of his city’s downtown. The city has remained basically a middle-class community, he said.

“The racial change just called attention to a downtown situation that would have come about even if the city’s population had remained the same,” he said.

Still, planners say that the long-term future of any downtown will be determined to a major extent by the demographics in surrounding neighborhoods and how downtown responds to that customer base.

Modest Revival

Indeed, Inglewood’s refurbished Market Street is enjoying a modest business revival under the banner of discount merchandising and the ownership of a new generation of mostly Asian merchants.

But city and business leaders acknowledge that the heavy emphasis on bargain buys, along with a lingering image of unsafe streets, tends to turn away more affluent customers looking for higher-grade merchandise.

In an effort to strengthen ties between downtown and the city’s middle-class segment, Inglewood’s revitalization efforts have focused on upgrading the physical appearance of the stores and streets, while spurring the development of nearby office buildings and luxury town houses and condominiums for upscale newcomers.

Torrance Leaves Downtown Behind

For Torrance’s downtown, the decline began in the early 1950s as the city rapidly expanded west to the ocean, leaving the old business district on the east side of town dominated by smokestack industries, such as U.S. Steel and Armco.

“Downtown was no longer at the hub,” said Torrance City Manager LeRoy Jackson, who has worked for the city for 20 years. It also did not offer the range of merchandise needed by shoppers, who had to drive to Inglewood, Redondo Beach or downtown Los Angeles for big-ticket items, he said.

Lack of room for growth proved costly. As city government grew--from 100 employees in 1947 to about 900 by the end of the 1950s--officials decided to move City Hall from downtown to its present, much larger quarters on Torrance Boulevard at Madrona Avenue.

And Sears, which had eyed downtown as a location for a new store, instead chose a former mushroom field along Hawthorne Boulevard. There, along with the Broadway, it became the anchor for what eventually grew into the Del Amo Fashion Center, billed as the world’s largest indoor mall.

Jobs for 6,000

The mall brought major blessings to Torrance in the form of increased retail business, jobs and taxes. According to recent estimates, it employs 6,000 workers and accounts for a large portion of the city’s $400 million in annual retail sales--a level that surpasses retailing in Detroit, which has a population nine times bigger than Torrance’s.

Merchants in downtown Torrance and in other old business districts within the marketing range of Del Amo and other regional malls, however, are not cheering.

“The malls killed the downtowns, no question about it,” said Redondo Beach Planning Director Harlan Curwick. “If you go (downtown) now, you’re likely to be the only one on the street.”

The final blow for downtown Torrance came in the late 1970s as U.S. Steel, Armco and other east-side industries began to close, cutting off the business district’s trade with thousands of workers.

That turn of events, however, may have opened the way to a brighter future for downtown, in the view of Torrance Councilman Bill Applegate and other supporters of the business district.

Future on East Side

“Torrance built itself on the east side and then spread to the ocean,” Applegate said. “But now those areas have reached saturation . . . so I think the future of the city is on the east side. Look at all the renewal that is taking place there.”

He pointed to the national marketing headquarters built by Toyota and under construction by Honda near Western Avenue, a development at the old Armco plant and several office structures.

But in a city enriched by the world’s greatest mall and numerous other prosperous business centers, downtown Torrance and its plight have not been at the top of public concerns.

Still, the city does not want a blighted area on its eastern borders, and in recent years the municipal government has been extending a helping hand in the form of street and utility improvements, along with rebates and low-interest loans to merchants who want to refurbish their stores.

“It’s basically a self-help program,” said Torrance planner Mike Bihn.

City Gets Involved

Bihn said the city also is beginning to use redevelopment money to acquire property and prepare it for developers. Among examples are the old Murray hotel, which was demolished to provide more off-street parking, and the site of the abandoned Stone & Meyers Mortuary, which will be used to relocate small businesses displaced by the 26-acre Honda project.

Among merchants banking on a downtown revival is Kirk Rossberg, owner of the Torrance Bakery and Sandwich Shop. His place, which sports a colorful, European-style exterior financed by one of the city’s low-interest loans, reflects Councilman Applegate’s vision of what downtown could become--a quaint village setting with quality, chic shops catering to customers turned off by the impersonal aspects of the malls. “I love it here,” said Rossberg, who gave up his job as manager of a bakery to start his own business. “I wouldn’t switch for anything.”

The 29-year-old Rossberg, one of a number of younger entrepreneurs who have taken over flagging businesses, said his store’s volume has more than tripled in the past two years.

Many Restaurants, Few Major Stores

Downtowns in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach have shifted heavily to restaurants and other service establishments in an effort to give customers a place to go when they aren’t going to the malls.

The two small beach communities now have 203 restaurants, with 58 of them in their downtowns.

The result, according to Hermosa Beach Planning Director Mike Schubach: too many restaurants and not enough variety.

Manhattan Beach Mayor Jan Dennis agrees. “A city should have a complete downtown where people can buy anything they need,” she said. “A downtown to me is like a family going home. You walk down the street and you know all the shopkeepers. It’s a warm, secure feeling.”

Revenue From Mall

Despite her feelings for the traditional downtown, Dennis said it was also good to have a mall around--like Manhattan Village, a relatively small but upscale and prosperous shopping center that greatly augments the city’s sales tax revenues.

“Competition helps growth on both the mall and downtown sides,” Dennis said. “I’d like to keep people here, shopping in Manhattan Beach, rather than somewhere else.”

For their part, many retail merchants in the beach cities say they are not feeling very secure, and several interviewed for this report said they may have to go the way of other failed businesses.

Besides lethal competition from the malls, shopkeepers say they must contend with inadequate parking--a problem that almost universally afflicts old downtowns, but rarely to the degree experienced by motorists who venture into the densely populated beach cities.

Money From Parking

In Hermosa Beach, strict enforcement at the meters boosted revenues from parking fees and fines last year to about $900,000, making them the fourth largest source of income in the city’s $11.6 million budget.

“It’s not just the malls that are killing us, it’s the parking,” said Hermosa Beach store owner Lamia Hammad. “People come down here to buy something for $10 and then they have to pay $20 for a ticket.”

Councilwoman June Williams is not sympathetic to such complaints. “I’m getting tired of hearing about Hermosa Beach and its parking ticket problems,” she said. “I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never got a ticket.”

She said customers can get four hours of free parking in downtown lots by having their stubs validated in the stores. “That’s enough to shop in every store in Hermosa Beach and have time left over for dinner,” she said. Schubach, the city’s planning director, said parking is only one factor in what ails downtown stores along Pier and Hermosa avenues. Others include a lack of variety and wasted effort in trying to attract regular customers from out of town, he said.

He said the merchants should concentrate instead on their real customer base--residents, restaurant patrons and casual beach-goers.

U.S. Funds Sought

Schubach said Hermosa is angling this year for state and federal funds to finance downtown improvements, such as upgrading streets, alleys and storefronts. But, he said, the scope of any such efforts are limited by the community’s “split personality.”

Half of the people, he said, want to see downtown revitalized and the other side feels that any redevelopment would lead to high-rise buildings and worse congestion. He cited the ongoing controversy over building a new hotel at the Biltmore hotel site as an example.

Neighboring Manhattan Beach has gone further to help its downtown, which is spread mainly along Highland and Manhattan avenues and Manhattan Beach Boulevard. In fact, the city is going to renovate public portions of the whole area, starting in February.

The $5-million project, called “Streetscape,” is aimed at sprucing up the streets and giving downtown a unified, outdoor-mall appearance, according to Public Works Director Mort August. He said the program is being financed through the city’s share of gas taxes, revenue from parking meters and an assessment for new street lighting.

Only a Frame

But all the new lights, trees, benches and other features will only provide a “frame for a pretty picture” that must be filled out by improvements store owners are expected to make on their building facades, August said.

Merchants interviewed by The Times said their joy over the project was mixed with some misgivings about how customers would find their way through the machinery and debris during the six-month construction period, which extends into the first part of summer--downtown’s busiest season.

Still, Mayor Dennis observed, “you have to accept change or you become stagnant. If you become stagnant, you lose eventually anyway.”

Redondo Beach lost its old downtown but gained a shopping center--a trade-off that many other cities wish they could make. The South Bay Shopping Center, which recently transformed itself into the Galleria at South Bay, has been pumping tax revenues into the city’s coffers since its arrival in 1985.

Condos Built

And the downtown itself--a 50-acre strip south of King Harbor--transformed itself into rows of spiffy, ocean-view condos, instead of becoming the bedraggled albatross that burdens the commercial fortunes of other communities.

Like downtowns in the beach cities, the Malaga Cove Plaza in Palos Verdes Estates has not experienced the population shifts that have influenced the fortunes of old business districts in Inglewood, San Pedro, Gardena and other communities.

On the Peninsula and the beaches, limited space and high property values tend to ensure a continuity of affluent residents. Besides neighborhood stability, Malaga Cove has the advantages of ample parking and a picturesque Mediterranean setting, complete with a marble statue of Neptune gazing out over the sea.

Merchants in the plaza, which began taking shape in the mid-1920s as the first Peninsula families settled on the west side of the hill, concede that their regular customers may stray from time to time to the Peninsula Center shopping complex a few miles away, or to other malls.

But overall, they say, customer loyalty, nurtured in a leisurely, congenial atmosphere--”everybody knows everybody here,” in the words of stockbroker Dick Dunbar--has enabled the plaza to maintain a comfortable niche in the shadow of the new mercantile giants.

Sales Drift Away From Harbor Area

In the harbor area, regional shopping centers and competing commercial strips have drained much of the business vitality out of downtowns in San Pedro and Wilmington, which are both part of the city of Los Angeles.

But civic leaders say a number of other factors helped put the skids under their old commercial districts.

For Wilmington, it was the 1964 closing of the Catalina terminal at the foot of Avalon Boulevard, after the Los Angeles Harbor Department built a modern facility in San Pedro for island-bound passenger boats.

Wilmington merchants say the “Great White Steamer” once carried 2,000 people a day from the old terminal to the resort island. Many of the tourists shopped at stores along Avalon or stayed overnight at the Dom hotel while awaiting passage on the steamboat. “I remember coming downtown as a kid, and it was booming with tourist trade,” said Dennis Lord, incoming president of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce. “But when the Great White Steamer went away, downtown started to decline.”

The decline accelerated as most of the Anglo residents and many longtime owners of family businesses abandoned the town to a new and largely poorer population. Today, about 70% of Wilmington residents are Latino, which police say includes tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. Another 8% are Asian.

Owners Live Elsewhere

Downtown shops run by Latinos and Koreans are popping up, but most of the businesses are still owned or operated by Anglos who leave town after closing their stores for the day. “I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of business owners who still live here,” said Evelyne Poindexter, former manager of the Chamber of Commerce and a 49-year resident of Wilmington. “The storefronts need to be cleaned and upgraded, but a lot of people have lost heart.”

Lois Denzin, the chamber’s executive director, says the arrival of more minority-run businesses, many of which are owned by Wilmington residents, is a good sign for the downtown because it may lead to greater community involvement in efforts to revitalize the area. The chamber recently launched a new membership drive that targets minority-run businesses, she said.

“There are so many Hispanics who live and shop here,” Denzin said. “And they are now starting small, family-owned businesses. The people with vision know that this town has got to turn around.”

Yet some Anglo merchants, particularly those with deep roots in the changing community, say the transition has not been easy. They say language and cultural differences have created barriers for both customers and store operators.

Language a Barrier

“People don’t like to shop in stores where they can’t communicate,” said one Anglo merchant who asked not to be identified.

Isabell Willingham Thompson, who has operated Just Gals Fashions on Avalon Boulevard for 30 years, says language barriers make it difficult to organize the merchants.

“I have gone up and down the street trying to get various businesses interested in joint projects, but I can’t even talk with them unless I have a translator,” she said.

A growing number of homeless people, who use a downtown park and the Dom hotel as their hangouts, have added to the perception that the business district has been overrun by derelicts and criminals. The county uses the hotel to house indigents.

But Police Capt. Dennis Conte, who heads patrols in the harbor area, said crime in downtown Wilmington is no worse than in many other commercial areas in Los Angeles.

‘Safe Place’

“By and large, it is a safe place to shop,” he said. “It is a distasteful thing to see the vagrants and alcoholics on the street, but if they are not violating the law, there is not a whole lot we can do about it.”

Last year, a group of mostly Latino activists began a campaign to reawaken civic pride and attract official attention to what the leaders say are long-neglected needs of the community.

Revitalization of the downtown area, the group believes, could be the best means of upgrading the community as a whole, and some efforts in that direction are under way.

A commercial development is planned for the south end of Avalon Boulevard and state grants have been secured for a study of the entire area’s needs. Nelson Hernandez, a spokesman for harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, said she plans to seek federal grants to aid in the revitalization effort.

San Pedro Stores Fled Labor Unions

For San Pedro, whose downtown heyday dates back to the 1920s and ‘30s when the port area was crowded with cannery workers and sailors, the decline began in the postwar years.

In the first stage, aggressive efforts to unionize the downtown stores, mostly on Pacific Avenue and 6th and 7th, led to the departure of J. C. Penney, Montgomery Ward and other major retailers.

Those losses were followed in 1963 with the opening of the Vincent Thomas Bridge and the closing of the cross-channel ferry, which had carried workers to the canneries and other businesses on Terminal Island.

“On Friday afternoons, when the cannery workers came across with their paychecks, they would stop in at the stores to make payments on their accounts,” said John Zuanich, who operated Allen & Son Jewelers on 6th Street until moving the store to Western Avenue in 1966. “Suddenly that was gone.”

Competing Strips

Downtown San Pedro’s customer base, already weakened by the regional malls, has been further eroded by the rise of competing commercial strips on Gaffey Street and Western Avenue.

A study commissioned by the city points out that stores on Western are readily accessible to more affluent shoppers, many of whom have migrated up the Palos Verdes Peninsula to escape seedy areas around downtown.

And Gaffey has become the community’s major north-south arterial because it has direct access to the Harbor Freeway and the Vincent Thomas Bridge, the study says.

Pacific Avenue, downtown’s main street, found itself bypassed when the freeway off-ramp construction was completed. As a result, tourists and shoppers from outside San Pedro travel to the community’s biggest tourist attraction--the Ports o’ Call seaside shopping village-without ever seeing downtown.

“People go down to the foot of 6th Street and turn left to Ports o’ Call,” said Gerry Fagan, owner of Lad n’ Lassie children’s clothing store on 6th Street. “We want them to turn right, but there’s no way we can get them to do that.”

Affluent Move Out

As in other communities, the deterioration of San Pedro’s downtown area has been accompanied by a flight of higher-income residents and an influx of poorer people. Thrift and discount shops that cater to the mostly Latino newcomers have replaced some stores that couldn’t adjust to a new clientele.

Yet business leaders say that local residents provide an important source of income for downtown merchants.

“People with lower incomes are more likely to shop near their homes,” said Larry Montgomery, who heads the San Pedro Revitalization Corp., a government-funded group established to improve downtown. “We need to maintain that part of the customer base while reaching out to more affluent people who don’t live in the immediate area.”

Downtown merchants who are doing well, he said, are taking advantage of both markets.

Some merchants, however, contend that the presence of vagrants on the street, along with barred windows on many storefronts, contributes to the image of downtown as an undesirable place to shop.

Montgomery and other planners say the long-term future of downtown San Pedro is in its strategic coastal location and not merely as a commercial district for the surrounding residential community.

In that larger picture, the planners say, downtown will again become a thriving hub of coastal recreational, tourist and commercial activities. They say parts of the picture are being filled in by such projects as the marina in the nearby West Channel and the construction of a hotel and retail complex at the World Cruise Center about three-quarters of a mile north of downtown.

Gardena Grew Away From Core

Even before Gardena incorporated in 1932--to avoid annexation by Los Angeles-- Gardena Boulevard, then called Palm Avenue, was a bustling street surrounded by strawberry farms and apple orchards. A nearby railroad line brought in visitors from outlying areas.

“You could get just about anything you needed on the boulevard,” said Rick Giuliano, whose uncle opened a delicatessen and bakery on the town’s main street in 1952. The store is still there and a number of other shops bearing the family name have been established throughout the South Bay.

But like other interior suburban cities, Gardena expanded away from its original core and into outlying vacant land. By the early 1960s, it was clear that Redondo Beach Boulevard to the north would take over as the center of the city’s commercial activities.

And just as the railroad had brought customers to Gardena Boulevard in the first half of the century, the Redondo Beach Boulevard off-ramp from the Harbor Freeway now drops off shoppers on the doorsteps of businesses on that street.

The old street, like Pacific Avenue in San Pedro, missed out when engineers parceled out the freeway ramps. And access to the Artesia Freeway is not so great, either.

“Our boulevard is not on the way to anywhere,” said one merchant.

Population Shifted

Gardena’s downtown, after years of losing customers to the malls, also has experienced a major population shift in nearby neighborhoods. And the change, which presented the stores with a fresh pool of customers, has brought new vitality to the district.

The mostly Latino newcomers, like downtown customers in olden times, don’t mind walking a few blocks to do their shopping--especially at establishments where their language and customs are understood.

“The Mexican-oriented places on the street are flourishing,” said Terry Randall, operator of Art’s Fishing Tackle, a store that has been in business on the boulevard for 25 years. “If you don’t cater to the new people, you don’t make it here.”

Randall and other longtime merchants are hanging onto their customers by specializing in goods and services not offered by the new businesses.

Cinco de Mayo Parade

Mary Fernandez, owner of the Spanish Inn, a boulevard landmark for 30 years, said many merchants are working together to develop closer ties with the immigrants. Last spring, the merchants sponsored a Cinco de Mayo parade, commemorating a major Mexican holiday, and Hernandez said plans for a repeat of the event this year are in the works.

Mitch Lansdell, Gardena’s assistant city manager, said new activity along Gardena Boulevard is cause for optimism, but noted that the area still needs to upgrade its appearance, such as by refurbishing storefronts.

However, very few merchants have applied for matching grants offered by the city, he said. Some downtown merchants believe that major projects, such as the planned conversion of the former Bank of America building to office quarters, will be needed to inspire improvements by other property owners.

Shoppers to Have the Deciding Vote

The outcome of the battle to revive downtown may be determined, not by such factors as the design of buildings and streets, but by a highly subjective, fickle and all-powerful psychological force: the attitudes and habits of shoppers.

Downtown advocates believe many shoppers are rebelling against the plastic majesty of the malls. These shoppers, they say, pine for the days of personal service, for store owners who called them by name and kept a careful record of their clothes sizes and color preferences, for friendly clerks who could quickly come up with the right item and even offer some expert advice on how to use it.

Providing all of that in the right setting, the advocates say, draws customers away from the malls and into the downtown shops.

“There’s a very anti-mall feeling among our customers,” said Cheral Stewart-Leiboff, president of the Riviera Village Assn. in South Redondo. “They have a strong loyalty and protective feeling toward the stores, and it’s neat that they recognize that it takes year-round patronage to keep the little businesses in business.”

Moreover, the downtown advocates say, the very magnitude of the malls’ success is beginning to work against them. Parking may be plentiful, but even the vast lots fill up sometimes and the streets outside are becoming increasingly congested.

Nightmare After 4

“It’s a nightmare trying to get around in a car after 4 o’clock and it will get worse,’ said Isen, the former Torrance mayor, who added that he now regrets his role in promoting rapid growth in the city. “A lot of people are looking for ways to avoid the malls.”

And the variety of merchandise in the malls is awesome, but finding what you want in the great labyrinth of corridors and cavernous plazas can be a tiresome, boring chore, the downtown advocates say.

Of about 100 shoppers interviewed by Times reporters for this report, many strongly agreed.

On the other hand, there were shoppers who said they love the impersonality of the malls. They want to be a part of the faceless crowd. They don’t want personal relationships with store owners and clerks.

“When I go to the mall, I want to be left alone to do my own thing,” said one shopper. “I like to feel like a princess in a sultan’s treasure house, created just for me and filled with all those goodies waiting for me to inspect and compare to my heart’s content.

‘Can Return Anything’

“I often buy on impulse and it’s OK, because I know that I can return anything I want with no questions asked. She said she would feel guilty about returning purchases to a small merchant, especially if she knew him personally.

Another shopper said she also knows and trusts the quality of merchandise in the chain stores, which she called “clones of proven success.”

“It’s like a Big Mac hamburger,” she said. “You know it will always be the same, whether you go to McDonald’s down the street or in some hick town in Alabama.

“Shoppers don’t put their trust in people any more. They trust quality control because it always gives them what they want and expect.”

What’s Ahead

for ‘Downtown’?

So what is to become of Downtown ?

Should public and private efforts to revive it continue?

Or should Downtown be swept away and replaced by another shiny mini-mall, a jazzy commercial strip, more housing--or perhaps a new regional mall?

It depends on which downtown we’re talking about, according to Israel Stollman, executive director of the American Planning Assn. in Washington.

“The fate of each downtown has to be considered separately, in the overall context of the particular community in which it is located,” he said. “And each case involves a number of factors that have to be taken into account.”

Location Important

Among the factors, he said, are the geographical location of the business district in its community, other present and planned commercial developments, the city’s degree of dependence on downtown for tax revenue, the availability of land, demographics and the needs of people living near downtown.

Downtown’s historical and architectural assets also must be considered, says Ruth Ann Lehrer, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit organization concerned with preserving the state’s architectural heritage. “You can still read a town’s history in these old structures,” she said. “There is a lot worth saving in most downtowns, and the effort can be an economically profitable venture for the merchants and the community as a whole.”

A proper mix of historical setting and astute merchandising, Lehrer said, has revived a number of ancient business sections that might otherwise have been written off as obsolete.

As examples, she cited Quincy Marketplace in Boston, Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco and the use of an old courthouse in Hanford in northern California as the centerpiece of a 1930s-style marketplace.

Comes Down to Attitudes

What it all comes down to, says Pat Noyes, state coordinator for the California Main Street program, is the attitude of people toward their downtown.

“Downtown, whatever its physical nature and past, can only have value--value that’s worth preserving and enhancing--when enough people get together and give it that value,” she said.

“Those of us who already care must work very hard to raise public awareness of what we have to gain--or lose--when decisions are made on the fate of downtown.”

Other contributors to this special report include Times staff writers Gerald Faris, Julio Moran, Dean Murphy, Tim Waters, Michele L. Norris, Karen Roebuck, and George Stein. DR, MATT WUERKER