Compton Rejects Pleas for Hearing on Plaza Housing

Advocates of a plan to put low-cost homes on a 12-acre site in the Compton Auto Plaza continued their fight for the land, packing the City Council chambers Tuesday night with about 350 supporters, many of them families that want to live in the proposed $60,000 residences.

Rallied by local clergymen outside the chambers before the meeting, the demonstrators sang their own adaptation of “This Land is Your Land,” changing the words to fit the situation. “From the Alameda, near the 91 Freeway, in the auto plaza, in the City of Compton, this land was made for you and me,” they sang.

The City Council, however, appeared unmoved by the show of support, refusing to grant the group’s request for a public hearing on the housing plan.

Hearing Problematical

City Attorney Wesley Fenderson said the council cannot hold a public hearing without causing legal problems for itself because last month it gave a 90-day exclusive right to negotiate to a Mack Truck sales and service franchise that wants the same 12-acre site in the auto plaza. Mack Truck, said Fenderson, might accuse the city of not negotiating in good faith.

“We think we have as much right to bring in our petitions as Mack Truck,” the Rev. William R. Johnson Jr., pastor of Curry Temple in Compton, told the council.

He showed the city officials a stack of petitions that he said contained 9,000 signatures of people who back the housing plan. Johnson promised to gather another 9,000 signatures this month. “This is just the beginning,” he said.

Another leader of the housing group, the Rev. Ruben Anderson, pastor of Tower of Faith Evangelistic Church in Compton, told the council, “All we’re asking is that we be a part of the process about what’s going to be done with the land.”

Fenderson and some council members pointed out that the housing group has never filed a formal development application with the redevelopment agency. The group, made up of two community activist organizations, the South Central Organizing Committee and the United Neighborhoods Organization, plans to do that.

After the council meeting, leaders of the group said they will return to present the application to the city at a council meeting on Oct. 17. They also said that they will bring in lawyers to refute arguments from city officials that the land in question cannot be used for housing.

During the meeting, Councilman Maxcy Filer said the city cannot allow housing to go in the auto plaza because it would not be the “highest and best use” of the land, that there are contractual restrictions on how the land can be used and that bonds sold to finance street and lighting improvements there make it imperative that the city use the land for commercial development.

City officials have always argued that the land is the city’s most valuable asset because of its location alongside the 91 Freeway. The land must be used for commercial development, city officials say, because that would provide jobs and sales tax revenues, both of which the city badly needs.

The housing group is arguing that the city will never attract developers until it stabilizes its low-income population with home-owning families. The townhouse development is planned for families that earn between $18,000 and $26,000 annually. Church groups have already pledged some $8 million to help underwrite the cost of the development.

The housing advocates are particularly upset because on Aug. 22 the council held a workshop to discuss various development alternatives for the auto plaza. The group was present when the council agreed to send out requests for proposals to various kinds of developers and also told the housing group it could submit a proposal.

Without warning, however, the council suddenly reversed that action, voting 4 to 1 on Sept. 12 to give Mack Truck the exclusive negotiating rights. The requests for proposals were not sent out to developers, leaving the future of the development of auto plaza land up in the air.

The redevelopment staff has told the council that if it gives Mack Truck 12 acres there is not enough land left to attract commercial development.