Booming Pomona Bursts With Pride--and Critics : Mayoral Runoff Makes Future of Redevelopment Uncertain

As the air-conditioned tour bus eased its way through noontime traffic, about 20 of the city’s civic and business leaders peered from behind the tinted windows to survey the fruits of their labor.

They had used the state-authorized power of redevelopment to sink more than $575 million into Pomona’s fallow land, and after half a dozen years of ardent cultivation, they were pleased to see the yield finally starting to sprout.

From a mirrored-glass office building to a discount shopping warehouse to a modern apartment complex to a state-of-the-art electronics plant, an uprising of concrete and steel--and the promise of jobs and tax revenue--has begun to reshape this image-conscious city.

“All you have to do is look around,” Mayor G. Stanton Selby has said on many occasions. “Things are succeeding in Pomona. Without redevelopment, we’d be back in the Stone Age.”

But while the city fathers on last month’s “Explore Pomona . . . Positively” tour hailed this boom as the rebirth of their oft-maligned town, many residents and community activists have greeted it with fear and suspicion.

Chronic Fiscal Crunch

To these vocal and determined critics, redevelopment has yet to solve Pomona’s economic problems or relieve its chronic fiscal crunch--a perception heightened by a 57% increase in the local utility tax last year and a proposed $2.4-million special safety tax to be decided in an election this summer.

“We have to create an image, but the image we have to create is one of a safe, sound, economically run town,” said E.A. (Al) DePaola, a former City Council candidate and founder of the frequently critical Concerned Citizens Committee. “The new buildings look pretty, but that’s about all.”

With redevelopment-lured construction under way in virtually every corner of the city, the debate over its benefits has divided this community of 113,000, pitting a loose coalition of skeptical residents against an optimistic core of city officials and businessmen.

The issue came to a head last month when Selby, who has portrayed himself as a symbol of Pomona’s growth, was decisively defeated in his bid to win a third term by former Councilman C.L. (Clay) Bryant, a vehement critic of the city’s redevelopment efforts, and Councilwoman Donna Smith, who, while generally supportive of redevelopment, has been far less enthusiastic than Selby.

The April 21 mayoral runoff between Bryant and Smith will focus particular attention on the city’s most ambitious redevelopment project yet, a proposed $96-million World Trade Center that Bryant has called an “albatross” and Smith has only “cautiously” supported.

The result of that runoff, many civic leaders speculate, as well as the city’s ability to convince its residents that redevelopment is a profitable investment, will have a major impact on how Pomona evolves over the next several years.

“The exciting part of redevelopment is also the problem with it,” said Sanford A. Sorensen, who as director of community development is the main architect of the city’s redevelopment efforts. “It’s a non-traditional government function. The city is involved in taking risks . . . and a lot of people are just frankly uncomfortable with that.”

With almost 5,000 of Pomona’s 14,624 acres designated as part of redevelopment areas, however, the way already has been paved for major changes in the city’s economic and aesthetic landscape.

By acquiring prime real estate, funding public improvements and using redevelopment bonds to provide low-interest financing, Sorensen and his staff have lured a broad mix of residential, commercial and industrial development to this 99-year-old city over the last several years.

To the south end of town, the Price Club, a 100,000-square-foot shopping warehouse that created 175 new jobs and will soon begin pumping an estimated $500,000 a year in sales tax revenue into the city’s general fund, opened in late 1985.

To the west, Pioneer Electronics, a $9-million electronics plant that is expected to create 285 new jobs within its first two years of operation, opened in January.

Downtown, the first 330 units of the Pomona Towne Center, a proposed 1,300-unit apartment complex, were completed last fall.

At the north end of Highway 71 (Corona Expressway), the University Corporate Center, a shiny $200-million business center that is expected to create 6,000 new jobs, will get its first tenants this summer.

At the south end of the expressway, the Pomona Auto Center, a 71-acre complex with a projected 10 car dealerships, is expected to generate $2 million a year in sales tax revenue when it opens in June.

Trade Center Planned

And, according to the developer, earth will begin moving within a month on the vacant downtown lot where the 14-story, 1-million-square-foot Inland Pacific World Trade Center is planned.

Although officials concede that redevelopment has yet to pump large amounts of money into the city’s general fund, they say that within a few years the projects should begin generating a wide range of revenues, from utility taxes to building license fees.

“The good things happening now are just going to continue to multiply,” said H.S. (Biff) Byrum, executive vice president of the Pomona Economic Development Corp., a private nonprofit organization that works closely with the city to help stimulate economic growth. “I don’t have a single doubt that the residents are going to be happy with what’s accomplished.”

But while city officials point with pride to Pomona’s growth, not all residents have found comfort in the current flux.

Instead, some say, Pomona is a city where cosmetic solutions are applied to more fundamental problems, a place where money is used to enhance an image rather than benefit the people who live there.

‘Want to Live Like People’

“The people don’t want these big, immense buildings,” said Bryant, who has suggested that the city pursue projects such as department stores, movie theaters and a Mexican village. “They want the little thing on the corner that will serve them. They want to live like people.”

Others say that redevelopment has failed to benefit Pomona’s large poor and minority population. Many of the projects, they contend, ultimately drive out the economically disadvantaged rather than assist them.

“Redevelopment’s not helping the people, it’s helping the businessman,” said Harold Webb, president of the Pomona Valley National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, adding that new businesses should be required to hire a quota of local residents. “Include the people who are here in the plan. Let us be a part of that.”

Even Smith, who in her two years on the council has generally favored the city’s redevelopment plans, said that community concerns have not been adequately addressed.

“We are moving forward in a positive direction, but we’ve got to incorporate the community’s feelings and concerns into that direction, not just staff’s agenda,” Smith said. “We have not set goals based on community input. We have to be sensitive to the needs of the people.”

Critics also point out that not all the city’s projects have been immediately successful.

Financial backers of the 16-acre Cobblestone Creek condominium project, for example, went bankrupt shortly after plans were approved in 1982. New financiers were lined up, and the first phase of 62 units is under construction.

In 1983, the Pomona Redevelopment Agency provided a $1.5-million loan to the developer for renovations of Indian Hill Mall, the city’s main shopping center. Since then, the two anchoring department stores, Sears and Zodys, have both left. Although a Ralph’s Giant supermarket opened last year, the mall still suffers from competition from the Montclair Plaza, where Sears went.

And although the city has big plans to build the World Trade Center in the heart of downtown, the proposed site has been nothing more than a vacant stretch of dirt for nearly a dozen years.

“I think Pomona has done a great deal with the assets we’ve had,” said James S. Baker, mayor from 1961 to 1963. “But we’re not sitting on oil wells. We’re not sitting on gold mines.”

Once a thriving citrus town that formed the hub of the Inland Empire, Pomona in the late 1960s began a steady downward spiral that by the next decade had reduced it to little more than a backwater, low-rent, suburban sprawl.

The decline was caused by a combination of factors, including a change in shopping patterns toward regional malls. Pomona had lost more than 50% of its retail stores and businesses by the early 1970s.

During those years, large numbers of blacks, and later Latinos, moved into the city, straining the social fabric of the community as and boosted the minority population to the 50% level. By 1974, white flight, as well as a variety of economic problems, had left nearly 1,000 homes abandoned and boarded up in Pomona, according to a study by the Valley Assn. of Cities.

“Pomona was deserted first by the middle class,” Sorensen said. “With that, very quickly went the investment community.”

Revitalization Campaign

So while many San Gabriel Valley communities recently have sought to slow or halt growth, Pomona has embarked on an ambitious revitalization campaign, spearheaded by aggressive efforts to broaden its economic base and promote a positive image to developers.

Slick brochures with glossy color photos proclaim that the city has “The Right Mix.” Small monuments at Pomona’s main entrances are adorned with likenesses of the city’s namesake, the Roman goddess of fruit and bounty.

But, officials say, perhaps the most powerful weapon in any city’s arsenal is the ability to designate a parcel of land as a redevelopment area.

Established by state law to help communities eliminate blight and encourage investment, redevelopment allows a city to acquire and assemble land--through eminent domain if necessary--in order to lure large-scale development.

In assembling land for developers, the Redevelopment Agency has had to relocate and compensate roughly 300 residents, according to Rose B. Ash, the city’s redevelopment coordinator.

Most of those cases stemmed from construction of the Pomona Towne Center apartments downtown, where 72 parcels were acquired by the agency, Ash said.

Displaced Residents Paid

On a citywide basis, an average of $4,000 in cash and $400 in moving expenses is allocated to displaced renters, she said. Homeowners are given fair market value for their houses plus about $15,000 in compensation and moving expenses. Businesses are entitled to moving expenses or $10,000.

The one major public outcry against eminent domain came in January, 1986, when more than 500 residents of the so-called Patritti Tract converged on City Hill to protest the inclusion of their largely low-income neighborhood in a redevelopment area.

After a heated meeting in which residents accused the city of unfairly plotting to seize their property, council members--who act as the Redevelopment Agency--agreed to exclude the 70-acre southwest Pomona tract from their plans.

Besides assembling land, the city also has the power to issue redevelopment bonds that can be used to offer below-market rate financing to developers and home buyers.

The Redevelopment Agency, which established its first project in 1969, has issued bonds amounting to more than $575 million. Most of the bonds do not obligate the city or the Redevelopment Agency to repay the investors who buy them. Instead, the investors are repaid by the developers or home buyers who borrow the money raised by the bonds and pay interest on it.

“All we are is the conduit,” Sorensen said of this redevelopment function.

Created Pool of Money

In the 3,500-home Phillips Ranch development, for example, the agency issued more than $400 million in mortgage revenue bonds that created a pool of money from which home buyers could borrow.

Additionally, the agency paid for the cost of a $2.2-million elementary school and a $300,000 fire station as an incentive to developers.

In return, during its peak years of construction in 1980 and 1981, the 2,000-acre planned community contributed about $2.5 million in building fees to the city’s general fund. A neighborhood shopping center built as part of the project generates about $100,000 a year in sales tax revenue, and homeowners pay more than $375,000 yearly in utility users tax.

Other projects, such as the Price Club and Towne Center apartments, have benefited from redevelopment-financed public improvements. The downtown apartment project alone was enhanced by $3.7 million worth of sewers, landscaping and sidewalks.

One price the city must pay for this, however, is that as property taxes increase because of new development, it is the Redevelopment Agency, not the city’s general fund, that benefits. The city is allowed to receive property taxes only at the same levels as when the redevelopment area was created. Only when the bonds have been paid off and the redevelopment project has been disbanded will the city get to keep all the property taxes. That process can take as long as 20 or 30 years.

In Pomona, where redevelopment areas make up about one-third of the city’s total acreage, that could theoretically mean a big loss of the property tax revenue used to finance city services.

That scenario is particularly frustrating for a city that has slashed expenditures every year since 1982, including $1 million in cuts that were needed to help balance this year’s $37.9-million budget. Meanwhile, the new developments put an even greater strain on existing services.

But, as officials are quick to note, the city loses property tax revenue only if one assumes that the increased valuation would have occurred without the Redevelopment Agency’s help. “And that,” Sorensen said, “is an assumption I don’t believe you can make.”

Long-Term Investment

More important, officials say, redevelopment is a long-term investment that eventually will contribute utility taxes, building fees and sales taxes to the city’s general fund, far outweighing any loss of property tax revenue.

Finally, they say, the success of a project enhances the city’s image and signals to other developers that Pomona is a good place to invest.

Last year alone, 551 new companies obtained business licenses in Pomona, city officials said, bringing the total number of businesses up to 7,021.

“That’s one of the key things,” said Albert A. Correia, executive vice president of the Pomona Chamber of Commerce. “It says, ‘Hey, this is a really progressive, moving community.”’

Critics, however, say the city should be less preoccupied with its image and more concerned about the problems facing its residents.

‘Image Doesn’t Pay Bills’

“I could be starving to death and put on a hell of an image,” Bryant said. “That’s what’s happening in Pomona. You got to pay the bills, and image doesn’t pay the bills.”

Smith, on the other hand, said that emphasizing the positive is the most productive approach.

“We all know what our shortcomings are,” she said. “We don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to hear how we’re going to take care of those problems.”

For now, the bulldozers will continue to plow and the mortar will continue to rise as officials wait patiently for the city to reap the rewards.

“There’s no doubt that people would like this to be a more attractive, cleaner, safer place,” Sorensen said. “But the truth is, many of the people who live here can’t afford those kind of things. . . . Local government has no other tool (besides redevelopment) that will solve those problems.”

KEY REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN POMONA

1. Mountain Meadows

Proposal: A 151-acre housing development with 270 single-family homes.

Benefits: New residential area, increased property values, utility users tax.

Status: Construction of first 180 homes completed in 1983. Second phase of 90 units expected to be built by 1990.

2. Cobblestone Creek

Proposal: 16-acre condominium project with 296 one- and two-bedroom units.

Benefits: New residential area, increased propery values, utility users tax.

Status: The first phase of 62 units is now under construction.

3. University Corporate Center

Proposal: $200-million business center featuring 1.6 million square feet of office space.

Benefits: 6,000 new jobs when completed.

Status: First phase of 150,000 square feet completed in early 1986. First tenants will move in this summer. Plans for additional construction are under review.

4. Pioneer Electronics Inc.

Proposal: $9-million electronics plant with 180,000 square feet.

Benefits: 285 new jobs in first two years.

Status: Opened in January with an option to construct an additional 180,000 square feet.

5. Inland Pacific World Trade Center

Proposal: A $96-million business center with a 14-story tower, 300-room hotel and 500,000 square-feet of leasable space.

Benefits: 3,000 new jobs and $1 million a year of general fund revenue when completed.

Status: Under negotiation.

6. Towne Center

Proposal: A 17-city-block apartment complex with 1,300 one- and two-bedroom units.

Benefits: Revitalization of downtown, increased property values, utility user stax.

Status: First phase of 330 units completed in October, 1986. A second phase of 140 units is now under construction.

7. Phillips Ranch

Proposal: A 2,000-acre planned community with more than 4,000 single-family homes, 450 multi-family dwellings and a neighborhood shopping center.

Benefits: Shopping center produces $100,000 a year in sales tax. Residents generate utility users tax.

Status: About 3,500 homes completed; plans have been approved for 1,000 more homes to be built in next 3 years.

8. Auto Center

Proposal: 71-acre complex featuring 10 auto dealerships, a service center and fast food restaurants.

Benefits: 500 new jobs and $2 million a year in sales tax when completed.

Status: Under construction. First dealerships will open this summer.

9. Price Club

Proposal: 100,000-square-foot shopping center.

Benefits: 175 new jobs, $500,000 a year in sales tax.

Status: Opened November, 1985. A 16,000-square-foot expansion will be completed by May.

10. Regional Shopping Center

Proposal: 72-acre regional shopping complex.

Benefits: 1,500 new jobs and $400,000 a year in sales tax when completed.

Status: Under negotiation. Possible construction within 5 years.