Little-Known Law May Force Out Businesses : Zoning: Owners of the establishments are surprised and outraged by an ordinance passed 19 years ago that is changing the area to residential only.

About 40 business owners, outraged by a little-known zoning ordinance that could force them to close up shop to make way for new homes, are demanding that the City Council amend or rescind the law.

The ordinance, which was passed in 1971 in an attempt to clean up the hodgepodge of small businesses mixed with homes in some neighborhoods, changed commercial zoning in predominantly residential areas to residential zoning. City officials gave commercial property owners and operators in the rezoned areas a 20-year grace period before the new zone was to be enforced. Next January, time is up.

According to the ordinance, businesses must close in residential zones targeted by the ordinance unless the city grants their operators a special permit to stay open.

That has businessmen in the affected areas furious. Many of them bought or leased their property after the ordinance was approved and say they were never told that the property would one day have to give way to homes. The businessmen say the fact that their commercial property sits in an area zoned for homes or apartments does not show up in titles, on business licenses or on the paper work many took out when they applied for small business loans. At a City Council meeting last Monday, a group of them demanded that they be given an extension or that the zoning law be rescinded.

“When I went to get a new business license in 1984 nobody told me: ‘You only have six years and then you have to leave,’ ” said Hyo Chang Shin, owner of Wilch Brothers Market on Foster Bridge Boulevard. Shin said he needed the license because he was rebuilding the store after fire destroyed it in 1984. “If someone would have told me, I would have changed my mind and not gone through the trouble of reopening my store.”

An estimated 40 businesses along Gage Avenue, Garfield Avenue, Jaboneria Road, Foster Bridge Boulevard, Clara Street, Loveland Street and Lubec Street will be affected.

Paul Philips, a planning consultant who briefly worked for Bell Gardens in late 1988 and now has been hired by the businessmen, said it is the lack of notice that has upset the businessmen.

“Nobody ever told anybody about this,” Philips said. “The most unfair thing about all this is that for almost 20 years businesses have been allowed to come and go into City Hall and buy a business license without ever being told that they were going to have to leave in 1991. They are guys just doing their jobs, and to have this thrown in their face is unfair.”

City Manager Claude Booker said the zoning change was adopted in 1971 to eliminate the haphazard pattern of homes and businesses in some neighborhoods along the town’s major streets. During the 1940s and 1950s, before the city was incorporated, the county did most of the zoning for the area and simply blanketed it with a zone that allowed “everything from a factory to a home” to be built, Booker said.

Once the city was incorporated in 1961, city officials set about trying to correct some of the county’s zoning because it did not fit with their vision of Bell Gardens. They wanted the city to contain neat geographical areas designated for businesses, others for homes and others for light manufacturing.

“We inherited a mess and have been trying to get it in order since then,” Booker said.

When the now-controversial ordinance was passed, Booker said, there was a public hearing and a legal advertisement in the local paper, and property owners were individually notified by mail. Once the ordinance became part of the zoning code, Booker said, it was not the city’s responsibility to tell property owners what zone they were in.

“We have no obligation to go out and contact the property owners to tell them what zone they are in,” Booker said. “However, we do feel some moral obligation to let property owners know and that’s what we have been doing recently. That’s why everybody is so riled up.”

Booker said anyone who comes into Bell Gardens City Hall for a business license in an area targeted by the ordinance is now told that businesses will no longer be allowed as of January, 1991.

But that is much too late for Pat Zummo, who owns Ajax Brake Service at 5810 Gage Ave. Zummo, who has been in business 28 years, has a shop surrounded by homes, but he said he does not recall ever being notified that his property was being rezoned for residential use. If he had, he would have fought to have the ordinance defeated, he said.

“If I had been notified about this 20 years ago I would have provided for my future,” Zummo said. “I’ve been in this building 28 years and the city can’t just turn around and say, ‘Too bad, you’ve expired.’ What am I? A piece of meat? It’s like I’m flying an airplane and someone says, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be flying this kind of plane. Get out.’ Well, I’m left up in the air and this is the only kind of plane I know how to fly.”

Bell Gardens is not the only city to pass zoning changes that were scheduled to take effect 20 years later. According to planning directors in several cities, it is a common practice.

In Maywood, for example, a residential area that bordered on industry was rezoned for light manufacturing in 1967. The ordinance went into effect in 1987. When the city sent out notices in 1987 to let people know, “a lot of people were upset,” said Linda Dovalis of the Maywood Planning Department. Some sued. Dovalis said the Planning Commission heard individual cases and granted some residents five-year extensions. Since then, Dovalis said, the city has set up a system so that if people buy property in the wrong zone it will show up in the title.

But in Bell Gardens, some property owners have found out the hard way. Kenny Chon said last July he assumed the loan of the previous owner of Young Companion Market on Clara Street. He took over, but four months later he decided the market business was not for him and agreed to sell it to someone else. Chon said when the prospective buyer went to get a business license, he was told the property was in a residential zone and commercial business would not be allowed beginning next January.

“The buyer went to City Hall in December and came back with bad news for me,” Chon said. “What a Christmas present.”

Booker said it is the obligation of real estate brokers to tell buyers how property is zoned. When they don’t, he said, “the city gets the bad rap.”

According to state law, real estate sellers and their agents are required to let the buyer know what zoning restrictions there are on the property, said Charles Sanchez of the California Department of Real Estate. Depending on the case, failure to do so could constitute fraud, he said.

Mayor Roger McComas, the only current City Council member who was also on the council in 1971 when the ordinance was passed, said that when property owners rent or sell they have the duty to let the renter or new owner know.

“I owned some property in that area on Gage and when I sold it I told the guy, ‘Look now, there is a time period on this land,’ ” McComas said. “This change has been in effect a long time. It didn’t just come up.”

On Monday night, the City Council passed an ordinance that will allow businesses to apply for conditional use permits in order to keep operating.

Planning consultant Philips said that while passage of the ordinance is a good sign, there is no guarantee that the Planning Commission will grant everyone a permit or of what the permit will stipulate.

Booker said he expects many will be given a five-year extension or some other type of remedy.

“I doubt that anyone who is complaining now will be affected for another five or six years,” he said. “Doomsday is not January, 1991. We are not going to come through with a bulldozer. We are just starting a time clock so that each case can be reviewed and we can have an orderly transition.”