Officials Predict Booming Times for Crenshaw Area in 21st Century : Development: A seminar gives residents a glimpse of the possibilities that exist with the district’s ideal location and more affordable real estate.
The Crenshaw district, a primarily black community located between downtown Los Angeles and the airport, may become the next century’s boom town as real estate and home hunters discover its bargains, according to government and business officials meeting on the area’s future.
Crenshaw 2000, sponsored by the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce and Councilwoman Ruth Galanter’s office, was held Saturday at Dublin Avenue School to provide residents a picture of possibilities.
“Crenshaw is in the path of a megatrend--the continuing expansion of downtown on one side and LAX on the other,” Rubell Helgeson, a deputy planner in Galanter’s office, told about 100 residents. She was one of a dozen speakers from local government, banks and community affairs groups.
Ronald Smothers, president of the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce, points out that the community’s proximity to the Coliseum, Hollywood, downtown and the Wilshire district will mean less stress for commuting workers. In addition, he said, Crenshaw offers relief from “outrageous” office and housing costs.
Businesses operating on the Westside, Smothers said, “could do it just as well a mile east” in the Crenshaw district. He predicts that property bargains will entice bankers, architects and other white-collar industries to relocate to Crenshaw.
If the area’s commercial success hangs on one factor, it is the Crenshaw Shopping Center, built in 1947 as one of the West Coast’s first malls and renovated and reopened as the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in 1988, said Richard Benbow, an administrator at the Community Redevelopment Agency.
“Clearly, if the mall fails, it puts a damper to revitalization in the community,” Benbow said.
With 60% of mall space leased and about five more stores to open this month, the shopping center’s management has been fighting against an attitude among businesses that question whether operating in black areas can yield a good profit.
“The tenants don’t have stores in any of the black areas of the city, so many of them are still leery,” said mall manager Leo Ray-Linch.
If the mall is the key factor for commercial growth, the catalyst for a residential migration is a neighborhood in the area called View Park, Smothers said. View Park, consisting of single-family homes, was formerly the Olympic Village for the 1932 Summer Games.
In View Park, a 4,000-square-foot home can sell for $500,000, moderate by Los Angeles standards. Property values reportedly have gone up as much as 100% in the last year.
Smothers and others see the possibility of Crenshaw becoming a boom town as having mixed results. Crenshaw property values will rise, but could drive out black families and entrepreneurs.
“As blacks sell out, they can’t afford to come back,” Smothers said.
According to 1980 census statistics, blacks made up 81.5% of the population in the Crenshaw area--bounded by Adams and La Brea boulevards, 79th Street and Van Ness Avenue. Asians made up 8%; Latinos 5% and whites 5%. In the coming decade, blacks are predicted to make up 78%; Latinos 10%; whites 7% and Asians 5%, according to the Los Angeles Planning Department and Galanter’s office.
Planning deputy Helgeson also spoke about the down-side of revitalization: more smog, family displacement and traffic. She provided copies of a traffic study that shows major Crenshaw streets will become even more congested by the year 2000.
Warning that the federal government may place sanctions on growth to limit pollution, Helgeson said: “We can’t solve the air pollution problem until we solve the traffic problem. If there’s a single issue that can dampen Los Angeles’ growth trend, air pollution is it.”
Smothers voiced concern about the role of the area’s current residents in revitalization.
“I don’t see where blacks are adapting to the new scheme of things. Our youth are not being prepared to take positions of tomorrow. They’re not getting an education and they’re giving way to drugs.”
Residents attending Crenshaw 2000 urged each other to begin molding the future, form partnerships to buy properties and dispel the apathy that they said is partly to blame for the unwanted presence of two prison probation offices within blocks of each other.
When one resident shouted that two probation offices would never have been put in Beverly Hills, another resident, Charles Ludd, replied: “It’s not that Beverly Hills would not tolerate it. The people of Beverly Hills would not tolerate it.”
Councilwoman Galanter and the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce will continue the 2000 program with a meeting in January. The focus will be on social issues: education, crime, art and senior and social service.
