MALL MAKE OVER : Crenshaw Center--A Rebirth in the Inner City

It’s been years since Olivia McPherson has shopped at the Crenshaw Shopping Center, even though the mall’s Broadway and May Co. department stores are only a couple of blocks from her View Park home.

“I used to go to the shopping center for everything,” said McPherson, a 57-year-old retired bus driver for the Los Angeles schools. “It’s right in my back yard. But it became a real eyesore. Now I do most of my shopping in Fox Hills or Del Amo, which offer more stores.”

Shopping selection will expand greatly for Crenshaw-area consumers such as McPherson on Nov. 4, when the $120-million overhaul of the Crenshaw Shopping Center is completed. Renamed the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, the two-level, 100-store complex will be the first major enclosed mall in the country to open in a mostly black, urban community, according to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

“This is the hottest area anywhere in the Los Angeles basin,” said Bradley, who has had a home for years in nearby Leimert Park. “There won’t be any more bargain basement (shops). This development is all first class.”

Experts say business and local political officials around the country will be closely watching the plaza, whose success will turn on its ability to lure back disgruntled shoppers like McPherson from the surrounding middle-class communities of Ladera Heights, View Park, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park.

“What we hope to prove is that you can maintain a profitable business operation within a multiracial, inner city community,” said developer Alexander Haagen, whose company has spent more than $50 million on the project. “ . . . If the community doesn’t support this center, then centers like this will be dead all over the country.”

Adds Bernard Anderson, managing partner of the Urban Affairs Partnership, a privately held urban development consulting firm in Philadelphia: “Companies look strictly at the bottom line, and social considerations do not come into play.” But if the plaza proves successful, he said, “other companies around the country will probably be more willing to consider” similar projects.

Crenshaw Plaza has certainly priced itself as if it were one of the most desirable locations in Los Angeles. Its 768,000 square feet of space is being leased at roughly $28 to $36 a square foot, compared to about $15 to $20 a square foot at nearby Fox Hills Mall and $25 to $35 in the Galleria at South Bay. All three malls also charge their merchants a percentage of sales.

And aesthetically, the plaza’s etched glass railings, skylights and towering, mature palm trees inside and outside the facility invite comparisons to Southern California’s fanciest malls.

Yet in spite of the plaza’s swanky new surroundings, only about 65% of the space had been leased as of last week and only about 30 of the 100-odd stores will be operating by the Nov. 4 opening. Plaza officials predict that there will be a last-minute rush of new tenants as the Christmas shopping season draws near. But others say confidence in the new plaza will take time to develop.

Opened in 1948

“One of the key objectives will be for them to change the dynamics of the situation to get local support,” said Ki Suh Park, managing partner of the Beverly Hills consulting firm Gruen Associates, which conducted an impact study of the plaza for the city. “To capture money, they really have to have enough amenities to keep the money in the community . . . It won’t happen overnight. But the opening of the shopping center will give a tremendous impetus in that direction.”

Located at the intersection of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards, the Crenshaw Center was the first multi-department store, regional shopping center in the United States when it opened in 1948. But it fell on hard times over the past two decades as white residents abandoned the Crenshaw district and retailers began to cut store service and selection.

The departing white residents were replaced mostly by affluent black professionals. But the reputation of the Crenshaw district nevertheless suffered in the eyes of retailers due, in part, to the area’s proximity to more crime-ridden and economically depressed areas in South Central Los Angeles and the run-down appearance of Crenshaw Boulevard--with its collection of liquor stores, wig shops and other mom-and-pop businesses.

Average household income within a 3-mile radius of the plaza is $26,454, compared to $37,850 for Los Angeles as a whole, according to 1987 census estimates. Still, Gruen Associates found that 60% of the disposable income of Crenshaw residents was being spent outside the area because residents preferred the variety, service and selection offered by more modern malls.

“I’ve been to other Broadway and May Co. stores that are better maintained or stocked,” said Yvette Rowland, a lawyer who lives near the shopping center in Leimert Park. “I don’t know if it’s sheer location or what. But service is poor and nobody seems to care about that.”

That sentiment was echoed last week at a community meeting of plaza department store officials and the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Network.

Organizer Adrienne Mayberry was loudly applauded by a crowd of about 150 residents as she recounted her unpleasant shopping experiences during previous visits to both the Crenshaw Broadway and May Co. stores. She said store clerks were surly and on occasions she was forced to wait to make a purchase while a clerk finished a personal phone call. She also said merchandise was limited.

Efforts to Upgrade

Department store officials “have a misperception of who we are,” said Mayberry. “I think race has a lot to do with it. They have not, in the past, been very service-oriented. They think there are no good markets in the black community.”

Officials of May Co. and Broadway, which have remained open during the plaza’s construction, acknowledged that in the past they allowed service and selection to deteriorate at their Crenshaw stores. While they declined to give reasons for their past management practices, they say they are making major efforts to upgrade and improve their facilities, spending millions of dollars to remodel their stores to make them architecturally consistent with the art deco theme of the pastel-colored plaza.

“We are upgrading the store throughout,” said Edgar S. Mangiafico, chairman of May Co. of California. “We want to make it a more pleasant place to shop. So we are beefing up the inventory.”

Added H. Michael Hecht, chairman of Broadway department stores: “We are eliminating our bargain basement” in the Crenshaw Broadway store. “We are intensifying our service level.”

Joining May Co. and the Broadway as major tenants in the plaza will be Sears, which is building what it calls a “flagship” store. The Chicago-based retailer said it plans to close its Pico Boulevard and Inglewood stores when the Plaza officially opens to encourage customers to go to Crenshaw. Ironically, both stores scheduled to close are also in black neighborhoods.

In addition to the enclosed plaza, the project includes free-standing banks, restaurants, a police substation and a separate shopping strip that is seeking a grocery store tenant. Construction of the mall is a joint venture between the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and Alexander Haagen Co.

Yet while the plaza promises to bring consumers more convenience and choice as well as boost the economic fortunes of many retailers, some older and competing enterprises may be threatened.

Some Businesses Wary

Fox Hills Mall in Culver City, for example, is undergoing a multimillion-dollar face lift and installing a “food court” of new restaurants inside the three-story complex.

Although Lori McIntosh, mall general manager, said the changes are just coincidental with the completion of Crenshaw Plaza, she acknowledged that “there is concern that the Crenshaw mall will have an impact. But we are generally perceived to have a good (apparel) mix here.”

The future looks more dire for James A. Fullwood, owner of the Pig-Out Barbeque restaurant and one of 98 original Crenshaw Shopping Center tenants displaced by the plaza’s development. Although about a dozen displaced tenants will return to the mall when it is completed, Fullwood won’t be among them.

“I wanted to go into the mall but I couldn’t afford it,” said Fullwood, who said he is suing the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency over his displacement. “Because of my displacement, my whole financial picture has changed. We are in a location far inferior to the one we left,” said Fullwood, who was relocated to a site about two miles away on LaBrea Boulevard by the CRA. “The city was supposed to subsidize my rent at my new location. But they reneged on that promise and every other promise they made me.”

“I’m not aware of any promises made to him regarding subsidizing his rent,” said Robert Alaniz, a CRA spokesman. “We do know he’s been unhappy, but we are not aware of any lawsuit.” Asked about the validity of Fullwood’s complaints, Alaniz said: “I think we have gone above and beyond the call of duty with regard to relocation assistance.”

Other entrepreneurs--such as Los Angeles school policewoman, Juanda Honore, 26--are more sanguine about the plaza. For the fledgling businesswoman, the plaza represents an opportunity to parlay a personal inheritance into a pastry business.

“When the mall first came about . . . I felt this was too good of an opportunity to pass up,” said Honore, who has signed a lease to open C. J. Cinnamons, a muffin and pastry franchise. “It’s right in my community and I think it’s going to be financially beneficial to anybody that’s involved with it.”