The Push for Prime Land : 2 Downey Redevelopment Hearings to Consider Fate of Businesses

Business and property owners who fear they will lose their land and livelihood to large developers continue to strongly oppose plans to greatly expand Downey’s redevelopment area.

In public hearings this week, the City Council will balance the economic interests of the city against those of individuals who eventually could be forced to give up their prime properties if the expansion is approved.

Downey’s history in dealing with its reluctant entrepreneurs will play heavily in the debate.

The Downey Redevelopment Agency boasts 14 projects--both new developments and renovations--since the city formed its redevelopment district in 1978. The city has been able to persuade property owners to sell in all but four cases. In those instances, it used its power of eminent domain to condemn the land in court, clearing the path for two of the city’s largest redevelopment projects--Cardono Square and Mimi’s Cafe. Twelve businesses--tenants on those properties--were uprooted.

Not Without Court Haggles

Recent interviews show that the property owners whose land was condemned, although they had to haggle in court, were generally satisfied with the price paid for their income property.

Two former tenants on the condemned land say that forced relocation cost them their small businesses, while other entrepreneurs say they gained new customers and generally benefited from being relocated.

Allan Hicks, who with his wife, Kay, owned the OK Personnel Agency on Downey Avenue , calls himself a victim of redevelopment. “They just took us out of operation really. They’re not supposed to do things like that. I still don’t think it’s right.”

The Hickses had moved their business from Huntington Park to Downey in 1971, and decided to close in 1982 after the city condemned the building that housed their personnel agency. In compensation, Downey paid the Hickses $10,000.

Hicks said moving would have cost them their clientele. “When you change locations it takes a minimum of five years to build it back up again,” said the Garden Grove resident.

Hicks, 62, has a heart ailment and no longer works, and his wife went to work as a secretary after the personnel agency closed.

In contrast, Jose Hernandez, owner of Gabe’s Interiors, is much happier in his new location, where convenient parking has translated into new customers.

Hernandez’s business, like Hicks’, was displaced by the Cardono Square redevelopment project, a multimillion-dollar development anchored by a five-story, white-and-smoked-glass office building on Firestone Boulevard and Downey Avenue.

The two-person custom drapery and carpet shop moved to Florence Avenue just west of Lakewood Boulevard in 1983. Hernandez had been at the Downey Avenue location since 1971.

“I think I have more traffic on Florence and Lakewood than over there,” Hernandez said. “I don’t think I lost any customers. On the contrary, I think I gained more.”

The city’s 125-acre redevelopment zone along Firestone Boulevard is the forerunner of two redevelopment plans under consideration by the City Council.

On Monday, the City Council is holding a public hearing during which it could approve a 305-acre expansion of the redevelopment district along Firestone Boulevard.

During another public hearing Wednesday, the council will consider establishing a separate 118-acre redevelopment district straddling Woodruff Avenue at the industrial eastern edge of the city.

Both proposed projects have drawn strong opposition from property and business owners, who fear their property will be condemned and their businesses uprooted.

Once the district is created, property taxes used to support traditional governmental services is frozen. Additional tax revenue from the higher value of redeveloped properties is diverted to the Redevelopment Agency. The agency uses the money to promote redevelopment by financing public improvements, providing developers with discounts on land prices and other incentives.

The Downey Redevelopment Agency argues that business, tax dollars and jobs will go to other cities if “blighted” properties in key sections of Downey are not redeveloped.

Opponents counter that the proposed redevelopment areas are economically vital, and the Redevelopment Agency should not use eminent domain to take productive properties and businesses and resell them to large developers and businesses.

While some residential property is in the existing redevelopment district, none has ever been condemned, said Jim Cutts, director of communty development.

Owner Got a Higher Price

Maurice J. Hindin is an example of the property owners who took the city to court to get a satisfactory price for his condemned rental property.

Hindin said he owned a 8,130-square-foot parcel and building on Downey Avenue for about 40 years until the city condemned it for Cardono Square. After a jury trial, the Redevelopment Agency in 1982 paid Hindin $230,000.

Hindin, who is a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge, said Downey initially offered him $80,000.

“If the city wants it then they have to pay for it,” Hindin said. “They were very, very tough adversaries. They didn’t miss a trick.”

Meanwhile, some of Hindin’s tenants had begun to suffer under a leaky roof that the judge said he would have repaired had the city not condemned his property. The city is legally bound to pay the value of the property at the time of condemnation, so owners are reluctant to pay for improvements whose cost they cannot recoup.

“There’s no purpose in spending many thousands of dollars in putting on a new roof when you can’t even get it back,” Hindin said.

Mary Whitney, 62, was forced to move her Gingham Dog & Calico Cat art shop out of Hindin’s building after more than five years. She said the hassle of moving and the $50-a-month rent increase the first year were more than made up for by the additional parking space and air conditioning of her new location on Paramount Boulevard.

“I don’t know how I ever survived there,” Whitney said. “They said they maintained the building, but they didn’t.”

Beauty Shop Forced Out

Another of Hindin’s former tenants, Olivia Calvaruso, said the city should have prodded Hindin into renovating the building rather than seizing it for the Cardono project.

She, along with the Hickses, said that but for redevelopment she would still have her small business, which opened in 1971 and closed in 1981.

Calvaruso ran a small beauty shop with partner Deline Hopkins. Instead of relocating, the two closed the business; Hopkins secured an office job, while Calvaruso took a job in a beauty shop a block away from her former business. The Redevelopment Agency paid the two $10,000.

“At first we wanted to relocate,” Calvaruso said. “There were no buildings within walking distance. I do a lot of elderly ladies. I wish they would have tried a little harder to relocate us.”

The relocated business people contacted by The Times said it was an inconvenience to move, but most reopened in a matter of days. One said he was forced to move out of Downey because he could not afford the higher rents in the city’s newer buildings.

Almost all the owners said the Redevelopment Agency efficiently oversaw and paid for their relocations. But in one case, a relocated business owner said redevelopment officials did not find a site comparable to the previous location.

Employee Bought Business

Frank Campbell owned Downey Florist on Firestone Boulevard at Brookshire Avenue when the flower shop was forced to move after the city condemned the property for Mimi’s, a popular French-style cafe.

Wanda Brady, who had worked for Frank Campbell, bought the business shortly after it was relocated to Lakewood Boulevard in March 1981. She says business has suffered because the street is not as busy as Firestone Boulevard and the flower shop is no longer next to Downey High School, a prime source of customers.

“I was young and wanted the business and didn’t care where it was moved to,” said Brady, 37. “I didn’t realize the impact of being in the heart of things.”

Cutts, the redevelopment director, said state law requires the city to find a comparable location, and if the owner is not satisfied, he or she can reject the offer.

Brady said she would like to move back on Firestone Boulevard, “but I’m sure the rents would be prohibitive.”

A fear of future condemnation lingers for a group of relatives who had a 13,010-square-foot parcel and building taken by Downey in 1981.

Relatives Sued City

Evadene Dotson, her sister, Mary Ellen Bacile, and their two nephews sued the city and were eventually paid $280,000 for the property they inherited from their father and grandfather, Dotson said. The building had been vacant for two years after the redevelopment district was formed, Dotson said. And the settlement included conpensation for lost rent, she said.

“We had people interested in renting the building, but they did not want to move into the building and then have to find another location,” she said.

Dotson said the family owns another parcel with several small buildings in the proposed addition to the Firestone redevelopment district.

“My sister and I are both concerned,” said Dotson, who lives in Arroyo Grande in San Luis Obispo County. “The city does need to be redeveloped in certain areas, but I don’t want to come out in a losing deal, either. I don’t think we should have to sue the city again to get proper reimbursement from Downey.”