Ambitious Project Would Cover 1,900 Acres : 1st Step in Watts Redevelopment Taken

A huge economic development plan for Watts, proposing to redevelop more than 1,900 acres of decaying homes, apartments, small businesses, industrial sites and public housing projects, was given initial approval Wednesday by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency board.

A unanimous vote of the powerful city agency authorized an aerial survey of a 3-square-mile section of South-Central Los Angeles, the first step in a process of creating the biggest redevelopment area in the city’s history and eventually making available large amounts of money to revive the impoverished district.

With no opposition in sight, city officials said they hope to see the project approved by Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council in 1991.

New factories on presently abandoned sites, additional housing, an expanded Los Angeles Unified School District vocational school and shops and restaurants near the historic Watts Towers are envisioned for an area that became a national symbol for urban black anger and protest during the 1965 Watts riots.

More than 56,000 people live in the area, 86% of them black and 13% Latino.

Most are poor. The median income is $11,427. Unemployment is high and education low, with most residents not having completed high school. Most are renters, and of those who work, 39% are in blue-collar jobs, 37% in white-collar jobs and 23% are employed in service businesses.

Although there are many pleasant homes and bustling small businesses in the area, for the most part it presents a landscape of poverty, with vacant lots, boarded-up stores, rundown, overcrowded slum apartments and the abandoned sites of old factories, which once employed thousands. By the end of the century, according to the plans, there will be new homes and apartments, factories, restaurants and stores, providing jobs and services that now do not exist there.

It would be the second redevelopment project for Watts. The first, less than a tenth the size of this one, was approved a year after the riots. In the years that followed, new housing, a large health center and other facilities were built. But not until 1984, after years of Bradley’s jawboning business executives, was the area’s centerpiece, the Martin Luther King Jr. Shopping Center, opened at 103rd Street and Compton Avenue in the riot zone’s old “Charcoal Alley” of burned businesses.

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents most of the area, said she believes this project will move faster because of the potential availability of federal and state funds from enterprise zone programs.

“We see that the time is ripe,” Flores said in an interview. “All of this will come together to provide some jobs and increase business development in the area.”

Century Freeway’s Impact

Councilman Robert C. Farrell, who represents part of the area, said he believes this project will be more successful than the first one because it is adjacent to the Century Freeway being built to run to Los Angeles International Airport and to the existing Harbor Freeway. Two new trolley lines are already planned to serve the redevelopment area, one along the Century Freeway and the other running from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles.

“This is what the promise of redevelopment is about, helping communities in great need,” Farrell said.

The project, initiated by Flores, would take in an area roughly bounded by the Harbor Freeway, the city’s eastern boundary, Century Boulevard and Central Avenue, generally surrounding the first redevelopment area.

While Flores was the inspiration, the project will come as welcome political help for the mayor.

Bradley and the CRA board, which he appoints, have been accused of placing a higher priority on downtown Los Angeles development than on reviving poor neighborhoods and providing housing for the poor.

The project is in an important part of Bradley’s political base, an area that the mayor is counting on for a big vote when he runs for reelection next year.

The hoped-for improvements would be financed by government and private funds coming from a number of sources, Flores said.

A major source would be the redevelopment agency. It has the power to buy land or take it over through condemnation and then sell it at cut-rate prices to private buyers. In this case, the idea would be to sell the land to industrial firms. If factories were built, property tax revenues would increase and money would be available for housing and other improvements.

Enterprise Zone Programs

A second source would be the new federal and state enterprise zone programs in which businesses are granted tax breaks and other incentives to hire the unemployed.

“We are kind of betting on the come,” said Bernard E. Evans, Flores’ chief deputy. “Watts has been designated as an enterprise zone. Whatever administration comes in (in Washington in January), we feel there will be more funding for urban areas.”

Evans said federal and state highway funds for the Century Freeway project would be used for new housing. Some money for that project has been set aside to provide housing for those displaced by construction.

Backers of the project said they believe a combination of low-priced property and enterprise zone tax breaks, along with an increased number of graduates from the school district’s vocational school, will result in rebuilding of industry and more blue- and white-collar jobs.

Before, during and after World War II, the South-Central area had many industrial jobs from tire and auto plants and other factories. But today, the auto and tire plants are gone, as are the other facilities, with the exception of a large number of junkyards.

The project, totaling 1,900 acres, would be 400 acres larger than the CRA’s present biggest redevelopment area, downtown Los Angeles’ 1,500-acre Central Business District project. Other CRA upgrading projects under way are Hollywood, 1,100 acres; North Hollywood, 750 acres; Hoover, 406 acres, and Adams-Normandie, 404 acres.

Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen and The Times marketing research department contributed to this story.