2 Offers to Buy Land on Plaza Turned Down by Compton

The City Council this week turned a cold shoulder to two buyers offering millions of dollars for land that has been empty for years in the Compton Auto Plaza along the Artesia Freeway.

Complaining that the price was not right, the council Tuesday rejected a $3.7-million offer from a Mack Truck franchise that wants to develop a sales and service facility on about 12 acres.

A few moments later, the council rejected an offer by a group of community activists to pay $5 million in cash for 24 acres in the plaza. The council previously had turned down the group’s request to turn over the land for free for a development of moderately priced owner-occupied townhouses.

The truck sales and service operation, proposed by Universal Mack Sales and Service Inc., was rejected by Mayor Walter Tucker and Councilwomen Patricia Moore and Bernice Woods, who objected to selling the land below its appraised value of $4.7 million.

They also expressed concern over Mack’s proposal to make a $1-million down payment and pay the rest over 30 years.

Council members Maxcy Filer and Jane Robbins pressed for the sale, saying the proposal would generate jobs and tax revenues for the financially strapped city.

“That land has been vacant for at least 20 years. This is the best proposal we have had on that land,” Filer said. Robbins argued that the sales tax revenues that would be generated by truck sales were more important to the city than receiving cash up front for the land.

As part of the deal, Mack also said it would build a $2.5-million sales and service facility that would serve as security in case the company defaulted on its payments to the city. But that part of the proposal failed to sway the majority. The city has already taken possession of two empty auto buildings from dealers who closed, defaulting on their city loans.

In its proposal, Universal Mack also offered to guarantee sales tax revenues to the city, making up the difference if revenues fell short of projections.

No projected revenues were listed in the proposal before the council Tuesday, but the Universal Mack franchise in the last three months has recorded about $20 million in sales at the two sales and service operations that it wants to move to Compton, company President W. W. Hall told the council. Those sales would have generated about $200,000 in sales tax revenues in Compton, he said.

Universal Mack wants to move sales and service operations in Los Angeles and Signal Hill to the Compton site.

After the council vote, City Clerk Charles Davis, speaking as a private citizen, blasted the council decision. He pointed out that Universal Mack was offering to pay $1 million in cash up front, while the city still is waiting to collect on land it sold at a discount last year in another redevelopment project, the proposed Northside Shopping Center a block north of City Hall.

“We have not got one penny for that land, even though we probably put $10 million into clearing it,” Davis said. “Here we have a developer who was ready to tender $1 million today.”

Redevelopment Director Cynthia Coleman said in an interview after the meeting that the city spent far less than $10 million to clear the land, where construction of a K mart store is scheduled to begin, possibly in March. She said she did not remember the exact amount.

The Redevelopment Agency staff also had recommended that the council reject the Universal Mack proposal. Coleman said it is clear that the City Council is not willing to sell land at discount prices, a common practice among redevelopment agencies trying to lure businesses to their cities.

“We’re not looking at writing down any land,” Coleman said. “The agency is looking toward achieving fair market value.”

Woods and Moore, who joined Tucker in rejecting the proposal, were voted into office earlier this year after city officials drew heavy criticism from residents for selling land for less than its appraised value. Referring to the Mack proposal, Woods and Moore said they were opposed to “giving away” land.

Moore also called the proposal a piecemeal approach that would involve only 12 of the remaining 24 acres to be developed at the plaza. She pointed out that the council agreed this summer to work on a comprehensive plan to develop the 24 acres, and said it would consider such new uses as an electronics sales park and an entertainment center.

Mack representatives said after the vote that they will hold further discussions before deciding whether to make a new offer.

The council’s rejection of the housing proposal was nothing new for the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC). The community activist group had been trying to persuade the council for months to set aside the land for construction of 600 townhouses that would be sold to working families for about $60,000 each.

City officials have repeatedly rejected the idea, contending the commercial land is the city’s most valuable asset, and that a housing development would not generate jobs or tax revenues equal to the services that the city would have to provide for a housing development.

“We said no to housing and that’s it as far as we’re concerned,” Councilman Filer said.

But SCOC representatives are scheduled to meet today with the redevelopment staff for further discussions, said SCOC spokesman Larry Foundation.

He described the $5-million offer as a starting point for negotiations. He also said the group might consider another site, if one were made available. Some city officials have mentioned alternate sites, but the city has never formally raised that possibility, he said.

BACKGROUND When Compton opened its auto plaza in 1978, it envisioned a 66-acre car mall with as many as two dozen dealers to supply the economically depressed community with a steady stream of sales tax dollars. Within two years, though, city officials began scaling back their plans, conceding that Compton could not compete with auto malls in neighboring cities. Compton never attracted more than four dealerships to the mall, so it began looking for other ways to use the land. Some of it was set aside for the new Compton Lazben Hotel and convention center.