Setback for Renewal : Residents Reject ‘San Pedro 2000’ Plan, Submit Their Own

Residents of northeast San Pedro, angered by a Chamber of Commerce proposal to tear down the Rancho San Pedro housing project and replace it with commercial development, have drafted a revitalization plan for their community that calls for upgrading the project rather than demolishing it.

In a 10-page report released Tuesday, residents of the low-income housing project and the surrounding Barton Hill area also rejected a chamber proposal to change zoning in Barton Hill, one of San Pedro’s poorest neighborhoods. The chamber had proposed increasing densities from two to three units on residential lots in a 30-block area surrounding Pacific Avenue.

10 Speakers Outline Plan

About 10 residents outlined the plan, called “The Barton Hill Master Plan,” during a half-hour meeting at Los Angeles City Hall with aides to Mayor Tom Bradley and harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. The report represents a community consensus reached after months of meetings and discussions involving more than 1,200 residents and the leaders of several churches, the Barton Hill Neighborhood Organization, Toberman Settlement House and the Rancho San Pedro Tenants Assn., the residents said.

Bradley aide Christine Ung and Flores aide Mario Juravich said they would ask the city’s Planning Department to review the plan. They also agreed to arrange a meeting with Bradley, Flores and residents of both Barton Hill and Rancho San Pedro to discuss it.

The plan comes one year after the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce drafted its so-called “San Pedro 2000” report, which chamber officials had hoped would serve as the basis for a city-sponsored effort to upgrade northeast San Pedro.

In addition to the density increase in Barton Hill and the demolition of Rancho San Pedro, the chamber called for construction of new low-income housing on Pacific Avenue and the development of a harbor-front commercial strip where the housing project now stands.

Chamber officials have argued that their proposal would improve low-income housing in the area, reduce crime, provide incentives for Barton Hill homeowners to upgrade their properties, and open up several blocks of Harbor Boulevard near the expanding World Cruise Center to commercial development.

But from the beginning, Barton Hill and Rancho San Pedro residents have opposed the chamber’s proposal, calling it an underhanded effort to force some of San Pedro’s poorest residents out of the community--particularly its struggling downtown. Like the chamber, the residents seek to upgrade northeast San Pedro and reduce crime there, but they have incorporated none of the chamber’s solutions into their plan.

“The San Pedro 2000 plan was made with no concern for our feelings,” Rancho San Pedro resident Paulette Symonds said at the meeting Tuesday. “We put a lot of thought into our plan. We are aware that people in other parts of San Pedro think negatively about Barton Hill. But we love it. It is our home.”

In a statement released at the meeting, the residents said they drafted their plan with three goals in mind: stopping high-density development from overtaking the neighborhood, maintaining neighborhood control over local planning and zoning issues and preventing the demolition of Rancho San Pedro.

“We will not surrender one inch or one brick of Rancho San Pedro to those who call for its demolition,” the statement said.

Residents’ Recommendations

The residents’ plan suggests several ways to revitalize northeast San Pedro short of bulldozing existing structures or increasing residential densities. They include:

Improving the facades and grounds at Rancho San Pedro by adding brick and wood to exterior stucco walls and creating a greenbelt around the project;

Establishing a crime-prevention program at the project that would include patrols of high-crime areas by police, Housing Authority security officers and residents;

Forming a tenant government at the project that would screen applicants and help evict tenants involved in criminal activity or gangs;

Providing guaranteed jobs, through the Chamber of Commerce, for Barton Hill youths who graduate from high school and “remain arrest/conviction free;”

Encouraging homeowners in Barton Hill to seek assistance from the Barton Hill Neighborhood Housing Services to rehabilitate run-down homes;

Cracking down on absentee landlords who allow their properties to deteriorate by citing them for health and safety code violations;

Extending the boundaries of the downtown San Pedro revitalization zone to include businesses along north Pacific Avenue, which would make them eligible for financial and other assistance from the city.

Would Be Priced Out

At the meeting Tuesday, residents said redevelopment, like that proposed by the chamber, would raise rents and real estate values in northeast San Pedro so high that residents would be unable to remain there. Several of them said the building boom in San Pedro is already forcing some residents to leave.

“We have a situation where the children of third- and fourth-generation families can no longer afford to live there,” said Barton Hill resident Armando Sanchez. “The question is what do the people of San Pedro want--the people who have their roots there, not the transients . . . not the developers.” Leron Gubler, executive director of the chamber, said the chamber would review the residents’ plan and “see if there is anything of value in it.” The chamber’s proposal, which was submitted to Flores in the spring, had been put on hold until the Barton Hill plan was drafted, he said.

“Ours was a report recommending a strategy to develop the area,” Gubler said. “We recognized it would be a long-term project in any event.”

Last month, the chamber’s proposal received a less-than-enthusiastic review from city planning officials, whom Flores had asked to look at it. In a letter to Flores, Planning Director Kenneth C. Topping recommended against increasing residential densities in the Barton Hill area. Topping said that higher-density residential redevelopment would not necessarily solve crime problems, nor would it necessarily provide a market for new commercial development along Harbor Boulevard.

Topping said: “Recent development in San Pedro suggests that market forces may already be responding favorably” to zone changes made three years ago in other parts of the community when the San Pedro District Plan was adopted. “It seems prudent to allow the market the opportunity to respond to the recent zone changes . . . without introducing the prospect of uncertain change through a major plan restudy for northeast San Pedro.”

Topping sidestepped issues involving Rancho San Pedro, saying only that a review of problems at the project and the city’s other housing projects “could be helpful to long-term decision-making by the city.” The city’s Housing Authority has already begun a comprehensive review of the city’s housing projects, and the City Council has also ordered a study of its own.

Both Bradley and Flores have said they will not endorse a redevelopment or revitalization plan that does not have the support of residents in northeast San Pedro, including those at the housing project.

Ung, Bradley’s aide, said Bradley encouraged the residents to draft their plan after hearing complaints about the chamber’s proposal during a visit to San Pedro in July. Bradley and others have criticized the chamber for drafting its proposal without first consulting with Barton Hill and Rancho San Pedro residents.

“Our whole goal is to get input from the community, particularly on something that is going to affect them directly,” Ung said. Bradley “would have preferred if both the chamber and the Barton Hill residents worked together on one project, but since that didn’t happen, we will look at both reports.”

Both Ung and Juravich, Flores’ aide, said no decision has been made about how a final plan--if there is one--would be implemented.

The chamber has recommended that a redevelopment zone be established, and that a nonprofit corporation, with representatives from both the neighborhood and the business community, oversee new development.

The residents, fearful that they would be edged out of decisions, want the city’s Planning Department and a community task force--with two-thirds of its members coming from Barton Hill--to oversee any final plan.