Wary Developers Are Looking Elsewhere : Growth: A moratorium on multifamily units may have expired in Monterey Park, but builders aren’t exactly leaping into action.

San Gabriel Valley developer Gregory Tse leaned back in his swivel chair and laughed.

“Make a profit in Monterey Park? Are you kidding?” he said, shaking his head.

For Tse, president of Wing-On Realty, the era of building 12-unit condominiums in the city is over.

Tse said he doesn’t care that an 18-month ban on new apartments and condominiums in Monterey Park recently expired. And he isn’t paying any attention to city officials who promise there won’t be another such moratorium, at least not in the near future.

Tse isn’t the only one who is disillusioned. Other developers, who in the past jumped at opportunities to meet the needs of Monterey Park’s burgeoning population, say they too have given up trying to build in the city. They remember what it was like in 1986, when the city enacted its first building moratorium, then imposed tighter restrictions the next year. A year later, the council voted again to ban apartments and condominiums.

The phenomenon is not uncommon. In San Gabriel, a two-year ban on all construction except for single-family homes, imposed while city officials study the possibility of downzoning certain areas, will expire next month.

In Alhambra, 22 square blocks of land zoned at the highest density was downzoned last year after a nine-month ban on construction.

Some cities--including Monterey Park, Pasadena and South Pasadena--not only want lower densities, but limits on the number of apartments, condominiums and houses built each year. Thus they grant permits based on complicated competitive systems.

The slow-growth measures are nothing new. In 1982, voters in Monterey Park approved Proposition K, which designated an annual building limit of 100 single-family and multifamily units until 1992.

In April, 1988, San Gabriel citizens--incensed by what they considered runaway growth and escalating traffic problems--launched their own grass-roots campaign and elected three new council members.

And eight months ago, Pasadena voters passed the Growth Management Initiative, which severely curtails residential and commercial construction.

Several years ago, developers like Tse used to shrug their shoulders and brace themselves for the steep permit fees, design reviews and numerous planning commission hearings. They’d play by the cities’ rules when it came to parking requirements, minimum lot size, open space and limits on the length of driveways.

But now, many say they’ve had enough.

Safco Construction Co. has just completed its last project in Monterey Park, a 12-unit condominium on Alhambra Avenue that will sell for $265,000 per unit. But had Safco moved forward with construction 10 years ago, when it acquired the land, it could have built 20 units and made twice the profit, said Safco’s Sheue-Ling Su.

Instead, she said, the company lost money by paying interest on the undeveloped property for so long.

“We’re not building in Monterey Park anymore,” Su said. “It’s ridiculous. The city keeps jumping from moratorium to moratorium.”

Winston Ko, who built five condominium projects in Monterey Park ranging from 11 to 150 units, said he left the city for good 10 years ago after being harassed by city officials who wanted to control growth.

“It is not so much the specifications or the new restrictions” that turn developers away, he said. “It has to do with the attitudes of the council. They are hostile to developers. For that reason a lot of developers abandoned the city.”

Some developers say such hostile attitudes are a racist backlash against Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants, who constitute half of Monterey Park’s population and one-third of Alhambra’s.

When slow-growth movements intensified in the early 1980s, Asian immigrants were flocking to the west San Gabriel Valley in unprecedented numbers, searching for homes and business opportunities. That wave attracted developers who saw an increasing demand for affordable multifamily housing.

City officials, on the other hand, distance themselves from the Asian issue, and say the construction ban and tight restrictions are meant to ensure quality development, not to drive away builders.

“The ones who are complaining about the standards are the ones who want to rape the city,” Monterey Park Mayor Patricia M. Reichenberger said.

“I’d be very disappointed if a developer or landowner decided they didn’t want to waste their time in Monterey Park,” she said.

“I can understand they’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God! They did it (imposed a moratorium) twice.’ But once they realize they’re not going to be plastered with another one, they’ll feel more comfortable.”

At a recent breakfast meeting of the West San Gabriel Valley Board of Realtors, Monterey Park city planner M. Margo Wheeler told an audience of about 100 that there will be no more moratoriums in the city.

She also emphasized that the new building standards drafted during the moratorium are not drastically different. The most significant is a two-unit reduction in the maximum units allowed per acre in high- and medium-density zones.

The city is ready to accept permit applications for apartment and condominium projects, she said, and because none were issued in 1986 and during the last moratorium, annual housing allotments under Proposition K have carried over into the ensuing years. As a result, permits for 220 multifamily units are now available, Wheeler said.

Reichenberger said she anticipates that “a number of developers will be coming in to build. Quite a few will line up.”

But while Monterey Park officials denied that the new restrictions are intended to deter developers, San Gabriel City Manager Robert Clute said that was exactly the idea behind San Gabriel’s moratorium, which was approved by voters in 1987 and extended another year by the City Council last January.

Next month, when the moratorium expires, stricter standards will take effect, most probably in the form of downzoning 12 areas in the central and southern parts of the city.

“It’s very possible developers will pull out of many of these cities,” Clute said. “That’s probably what most cities are pointing towards.”

The trend has already hit Alhambra. Two years ago, the Planning Commission would get eight applications for apartment projects every couple of weeks.

“Now it’s unusual if we see more than two at a time,” said Alhambra Planning Director Mike Paules. “I’m speaking about this positively because we are still able to meet the housing need, and property values have actually gone up.”

But San Gabriel resident Gary Merideth, co-founder of Citizens for Responsible Development, which initiated that city’s moratorium and has consistently fought development in the city, said he doubts that construction will be impeded in the long run.

“Eventually, what I’ve learned is, developers don’t get tired because they’re doing it for the money,” Merideth said.

Back in his office at Wing-On, Tse was reminiscing about Monterey Park in the 1960s, when he and other developers bought up large tracts of land and began to build. Back then, he said, it was easy to make 25% to 30% commission on a project. Now, developers are lucky to get 10% in return, he said.

“No one’s building anymore,” he said. “Just a couple of units there, one house here. By the time it’s my turn to build, I’ll be dead.”