Rally Held to Press Compton Into Donating Site for Homes

About 1,000 people assembled by church and community groups rallied Sunday in Compton to pressure city officials to give away a prime parcel of land for construction of inexpensive housing instead of continuing efforts to develop it as an auto mall.

The South Central Organizing Committee, United Neighborhoods Organization and church groups, including the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese, called for an ambitious plan to build 600 three-bedroom townhouses at the site of the Compton Auto Plaza, a 55-acre parcel of city-owned land just north of the Artesia Freeway. The homes would sell for about $60,000 to families earning between $18,000 and $26,000 a year.

Compton officials, who have been pinning redevelopment dreams on bringing auto dealers to the site, oppose the housing plan, which they say would generate less tax revenue for the city.

But at the rally Sunday, speaker after speaker told the crowd that the stakes were much higher than the housing proposal--nothing less than the future of the much denigrated city. An owner-occupied townhouse development with peaceful, tree-lined streets would provide inexpensive housing and show Compton residents that gangs and drugs can be defeated, they said.

“I am tired of my members moving to places outside the city,” declared the Rev. B.T. Newman, pastor of the Citizens of Zion Church and president of the California State Baptist Convention.

“We can show the nation that Compton is not an eyesore. We are going to become an example to the nation,” he said.

The archdiocese, which has committed $3 million to develop affordable housing in Los Angeles and Compton and promised to raise $5 million more, sent Bishop Carl Fisher to the rally.

“It’s about time we got together to improve Compton,” Fisher said to approving roars.

Fisher urged absent City Council members “to make our dream a reality.” If they do not, he added, “it’s about time that we got some . . . members who can represent Compton.”

“For too long, only the industrial giants have been represented,” he said.

City officials, who put in streets and other improvements, have been unsuccessfully trying for more than a decade to develop the site as a base for auto dealerships.

But despite good access to the Artesia, Harbor and Long Beach freeways, only one auto dealership is operating on the site and plans for a 288-room hotel, which was to have opened there a year ago, have been stalled by financing and construction problems.

Much of the land remains dusty vacant lots separated by streets.

Several developers are seeking to acquire the land and the council is undertaking a study to determine its best use, according to Compton Redevelopment Manager Cynthia Coleman. Organizers of Sunday’s rally beseeched city officials to wait 120 days before making any commitments to developers.

The Rev. William R. Johnson, pastor of Curry Temple, called the names of absent city officials, starting with Councilwoman Patricia A. Moore, whom he identified as an ally of the housing plan.

The 2 p.m. rally was organized with heavy church backing by the South Central Organizing Committee. Many attending skipped lunch, coming straight from church in their Sunday finest.

The crowd abandoned paved streets at one point to move en masse onto a vacant lot, pounding wood stakes with red ribbons into the dusty soil as a symbolic gesture to give the parcel the appearance of a construction site.

Lorre Hartdige, 25, a postal clerk and Temple of Faith member who lives in nearby Long Beach, had difficulty walking on the soft soil in black, high-heel shoes. “They did not tell us not to bring high heels,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. God will provide another pair.”

Hartdige said she would gladly move to Compton to live in one of the townhouses, “realizing that I wouldn’t be able to buy a house any place in the county.”

Lincoln Bostick, a Bank of America employee and member of the Tower of Faith Church, said the city should abandon its attempt to bring auto dealerships to the site.

“Everybody knows the reputation about Compton, that you will get killed or that your business will not survive. Even the major food stores have left. Everybody has forsaken Compton,” he said.

The council, he said, “wanted to give the land to the auto dealerships, but they couldn’t.”

“So we said, ‘Give it to us for housing,’ ” he said.