Prize Project : Risks of redevelopment paid off in Monrovia, where the Huntington Oaks Shopping Center erased blight, created jobs, won a federal award. Now it’s a model for other cities.

Ten years ago, Monrovia city officials took a look at the blighted intersection of the just-completed Foothill Freeway and Huntington Drive and decided that the area would be perfect for a shopping center.

Then, that stretch of Huntington Drive was dotted with run-down businesses and ramshackle housing. Motorists usually sped through the area to get somewhere else.

But thanks to persistence, cooperation between the city and the developer, and a $4-million grant from the federal government, the showcase Huntington Oaks Shopping Center was built.

Since it opened in 1985, the 29-acre redevelopment project has drawn thousands of shoppers each day to Mervyn’s, Safeway and the 42 other retailers that do business there.

The complex, which also includes six restaurants, a theater and a four-story office building, has created 860 permanent jobs and generates more than $500,000 in sales taxes and $300,000 in property taxes annually to the city.

Outstanding Example

This month, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development presented the city with its Certificate of Merit Award, citing Huntington Oaks as an outstanding example of partnership between the public and private sectors.

Monrovia was one of six California cities--and the only one with a population under 50,000--to receive the award.

“The award means we have an advantage in getting future HUD grants and in attracting developers for other projects,” said Don Hopper, city director of community development.

The success of the project, Hopper said, also persuaded other developers to invest in Huntington Drive and launched the city on its redevelopment of the rest of the thoroughfare, including the area to the east now dotted with research and office complexes.

“The change in the West Huntington Drive environment has been dramatic,” city officials said in applying for the HUD award.

“Dilapidated, outmoded businesses and blighted housing have given way to a modern, richly appointed shopping center,” they said.

“The six . . . restaurants service a small regional area that draws people and sales tax dollars from other communities. This reverses a 15-year trend of sales dollars flowing to neighboring communities.”

City officials believe that Huntington Oaks provides a textbook example of how a small city can use a redevelopment project to help reverse its fortunes.

Like other older, small cities in the San Gabriel Valley, Monrovia was experiencing serious economic problems when it undertook the redevelopment project in 1977.

It had made an effort to revitalize its lagging downtown retail area on Myrtle Avenue, but sales tax revenue was down, much of the rest of the city was blighted, and it was losing both industry and population.

The number of building permits had fallen so drastically, said Hopper, “that we put a mirror under the city’s nose to see if it was still breathing.”

City officials, who were relatively inexperienced in using redevelopment as a tool to improve their city, faced a formidable task in creating their showcase.

They had to assemble a parcel that included 114 separate properties, including 98 houses, and also ward off competition from neighboring Duarte, which had a similar stretch of blighted land along Huntington Drive and also wanted the center.

“It was a footrace between Monrovia and Duarte,” said Hopper. “Our site was better, although more difficult to assemble. If the developer had sensed we could not assemble the site successfully, he would have looked at Duarte.”

They also had to fight the area’s blighted image.

“I had a tough time convincing retailers to come into the center because the area was so blighted,” said the developer, Stanley Gribble, who worked with the city on the project from the outset.

Monrovia already had one major Huntington Drive redevelopment project behind it when it began trying to line up the land and financing for the center. It had been successful in persuading a developer to build a nine-story Howard Johnson hotel at the intersection of Huntington Drive and the freeway, despite a study that concluded that the site could support only a coffee shop and a two-story motel.

“The hotel was the key,” Hopper said. “If we couldn’t have developed that, we never would have had the shopping center. With the hotel, we could point at a venture in this market that was successful.”

‘Catch-22’

But getting enough money to turn the vision into reality put Monrovia in a “Catch-22” situation.

Generally, cities issue bonds to raise funds to assemble a redevelopment site, relocate residents and businesses, clear the property and sell it to the developer. The investment is recouped through sales taxes and other revenues generated by the project.

But in Monrovia’s case, the city could not afford the project unless it could get a $4-million grant from the Department of Housing and Development, and it could not apply for the grant before it had lined up a developer and cleared the site.

So the city took a chance and arranged interim financing to tide it over until it could get the federal funds.

“It was a gutsy decision for the City Council to make a commitment to Huntington Oaks because of the intricacies involved in assembling the site and obtaining the financing,” Hopper said.

“We were able to buy all but one of the properties without condemnation, and most of the people were relocated in Monrovia,” Hopper said.

Although Monrovia’s redevelopment expertise was limited, Gribble said, the staff was aggressive and ambitious and worked well with him. And though it took eight years from start to finish, Gribble never wavered in his support.

The HUD grant came through in 1980, and construction began that year. But a slowdown in the economy delayed completion until 1985, and the project also came under the scrutiny of the county grand jury.

The grand jury began looking at Huntington Oaks in 1982 after it received an anonymous letter accusing Monrovia of taking property from senior citizens and the poor and selling it to developers, thereby misusing public funds.

“The jury sent us a letter of inquiry, and we viewed it as an opportunity to educate them on the redevelopment process,” Hopper said.

City officials spent long hours outlining Monrovia’s redevelopment activity for the grand jury, which “concluded the letter was unfounded.”

And in the process, Hopper said, grand jurors learned so much about redevelopment that they decided to use Monrovia as the yardstick by which they would measure all other redevelopment agencies.

In presenting the award, HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce said the 89 cities around the nation that won awards this year “demonstrate a remarkable degree of self-reliance--the willingness and capability to make use of local and private resources instead of federal assistance.”

In the case of Huntington Oaks, it took $8 million in public and $8 million in private financing to get the complex off the ground, and in its award application, Monrovia was able to show that it was seeking local independence from federal funding.

Gribble, who has developed more than 20 shopping centers throughout the West and owns most of Huntington Oaks, lauded the Redevelopment Agency’s efforts in making the project a success.

“Redevelopment has its risks,” he said, “but it is worth it if we think the city can perform and the project has viability.”