SANTA ANA: Image vs. Reality : Putting New Face Forward : Redevelopment: Santa Ana continues to use a controversial tool to improve its image--at the expense, some say, of available housing for its low-income residents.

When Robert Hoffman looks out of his City Hall window, the redevelopment chief sees glass and granite office towers, refurbished commercial buildings and a bustling government complex.

As he muses about the future, he sees a downtown theater, arts and restaurant complex drawing people from all over the county, and a monorail system carrying commuters from well-kept neighborhoods to jobs in gleaming business complexes around the city’s residential core.

When Helen Brown peers from her window a short distance away, however, she sees a busy street lined with strip commercial buildings, fronting a neighborhood of mostly older homes occupied mainly by low-income Latinos, in the midst of one of Orange County’s highest crime areas.

To Brown, director of the nonprofit Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp., Hoffman’s vision is a threat to Santa Ana’s low-income residents. She believes that the city’s vigorous program of redevelopment has insidiously nibbled away at its central core of deteriorating but affordable housing.

Welcome to Santa Ana--Orange County’s first experience with an urban environment and the city that is most experienced at using the often controversial tool of redevelopment to help reshape and redefine itself.

Age, its central location and its role as the county seat have conspired to give Santa Ana many of the problems of urbanization--a large low-income population, deteriorating housing, a high crime rate, youth gangs, traffic congestion, potholes and streets that flood in even moderate rains.

Right below Hoffman’s City Hall window, in fact, are faces of the homeless and hopeless who congregate downtown--drawn by the bus terminal, County Jail, courts and offices of the county’s various social services agencies.

But city officials are intent on using redevelopment to give Santa Ana some of the upside of urbanization as well--a thriving business community, a mass transit system that will really work, a central cultural district, broad streets with landscaped medians and, by osmosis if by no other means, upgraded residential communities.

The city’s approach generally is applauded. A new Times Orange County Poll found that most Santa Ana residents have a positive image of the city and that 39% of the city’s employed residents have jobs within the city limits--testimony to the economic benefit of redevelopment.

Fifty-three percent of poll respondents said the city has either improved or stayed the same over the past five years, and 54% are similarly optimistic looking five years ahead.

The Times Poll of 600 adult Santa Ana residents was conducted Feb. 15 through 18 by Mark Baldassare & Associates, using a random sample of listed and unlisted telephone numbers within the city. The margin of error is plus or minus 4%.

Yet former mayor Gordon Bricken, who was a member of the City Council and Redevelopment Agency for 10 years, says he has changed sides and no longer believes that Santa Ana redevelopment is especially good or particularly needed.

“The altruistic side of redevelopment, to do good by helping an area bootstrap itself,” he said, “was changed by Proposition 13,” the property tax limit approved by voters in 1978.

“Since then,” Bricken argues, “redevelopment agencies have become fundamental economic necessities whose real task is to steal taxes” by taking a chunk of property tax funds out of circulation and earmarking them specifically for redevelopment uses. “Then the cities use them to finance infrastructure improvements”--street repairs, sewer and storm drains expansions and the like--”that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.”

As for redevelopment’s impact on housing, Bricken believes that “it would be a contradiction in terms to expect redevelopment to create low-cost housing. Any housing is a drain on a city’s finances because of the services that have to be provided, and redevelopment’s mission is to generate money, not create a revenue sink.”

He said he does not believe that redevelopment has made the city more livable “because the neighborhoods that were nice 20 years ago are still nice, and the places that were crappy are still pretty much crappy.”

The debates have been going on over the 17 years that Santa Ana has been in the redevelopment business.

It was in 1970 that the California Legislature made redevelopment possible by enabling communities to capture and set aside property tax revenues to help finance commercial, industrial and even residential development.

The law also enabled cities to condemn property, forcibly relocate businesses and residents and sell land purchased with tax money at steeply discounted prices in order to entice developers into doing business in what are loosely defined as blighted areas.

Today, Santa Ana “has the most aggressive redevelopment program in Orange County, maybe in the entire state,” Mayor Daniel H. Young says in his best matter-of-fact voice.

And, indeed, a look at a map of Santa Ana maintained by the community development department shows that virtually all commercial, retail and industrial areas of the city are within one of the six redevelopment project areas established in the city.

Santa Ana, with 11% of the county’s population, has about 16% of all of its businesses, or 13,000 of them--up from 12,000 in 1987.

An early indication of the aggressiveness with which Santa Ana would pursue redevelopment came in 1974, when the city declared that the Fashion Square shopping center, arguably Santa Ana’s only viable retail area at the time, was blighted and should be incorporated into the downtown redevelopment project. It was a move that required the city to stretch a mile-long redevelopment corridor down North Main Street to physically connect the mall with downtown.

Today, Fashion Square is the $400-million MainPlace mall, and a number of major commercial complexes are being built in the corridor.

“Redevelopment is a significant part of the life of this city,” said Young. “And the underlying reason is that we are the first community in Orange County to be old enough to see many of our buildings and our infrastructure outlive their useful lives.”

Because redevelopment enables the city to use locally generated tax funds for infrastructure improvements rather than shipping most of the money off to the state and county, “it is the only economically feasible tool the city has to redo its infrastructure,” Young says.

“In newer cities, like Irvine, new development fees pay for streets and sewers and other necessities. But a developed city like Santa Ana can’t do that.”

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that Santa Ana really started pursuing redevelopment projects outside the downtown area. But in the past five years, more than a dozen high-rise office buildings have been added to the city’s skyline, with hundreds of thousands of square feet of industrial, retail and commercial space.

Stars in the city’s redevelopment heaven include the MainPlace shopping mall, the $300-million Hutton Centre, a $50-million auto mall and the $600-million MacArthur Place “urban village” where construction has just begun on what will be a major complex of offices, shops, theaters, restaurants and residences.

On the drawing boards are more than $1.5 billion worth of major projects including a downtown jewelry and trade mart, a 20,000-seat indoor sports arena that 56% of poll respondents favor, a museum and arts district and several large complexes, one that will include one of the first high-rise condominium buildings in the county.

Not part of redevelopment, but definitely something that will augment the city’s efforts, is a monorail system being discussed by officials in Santa Ana and four other cities.

The initial proposal called for the monorail to begin at John Wayne Airport, curve through the Irvine Business Center in Tustin to Hutton Centre in Santa Ana and then run down Main Street to MainPlace, then through the west side of Orange to Anaheim Stadium.

But Young, who recently led the push for adoption of the Bristol Street corridor as the city’s sixth redevelopment area, has quietly begun planning to augment that basic route with a loop that would open up central Santa Ana along Bristol for new development activity.

The Bristol redevelopment plan as currently drafted is basically a street widening project. It has engendered controversy--and a lawsuit by Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino legal rights group that claims the city has no plan to replace the low-cost housing it will tear down.

Young believes that the suit will be settled. And when the Bristol project starts up again, Young will seek--in a proposal he has not yet shared with officials in the other cities--to create a secondary monorail line looping into South Coast Plaza, down Bristol to Civic Center Drive, through the Civic Center and back to Main Street.

Youngs says the line would make local mass transit accessible from a huge swath of Santa Ana’s central residential core and would create commercial and retail development opportunities.

Less visible in the redevelopment of Santa Ana are projects like the Business Enterprise Center, a city-financed incubator for small businesses, and an outreach program in which redevelopment officials visit business owners to let them know they are valued so they won’t think of pulling up stakes.

In all, the city has sponsored about $100 million in tax-free bond issues for various businesses that use the money for expansion or relocation within the city, and the Redevelopment Agency has made about $17 million in direct loans to businesses. The agency also has spent more than $550,000 reimbursing small business owners--many of them in the downtown--who have improved the facades of their buildings.

Despite the commercial successes, there are those who maintain that the city is ignoring its central city residents by removing low-cost housing and failing to help upgrade what is left.

In the downtown redevelopment district, the city’s first, several hundred barrio homes were removed in the mid-1970s to make way for office buildings. A senior citizens apartment complex and a privately developed condominium project helped replace the units, but not at prices that the original residents, mainly low-income Latino families, could afford.

In the new Bristol Street program, an additional 200 mostly low-income homes are slated for the wrecker’s ball.

It was a lawsuit over the issue of replacement housing in the initial downtown redevelopment project that provided financing for Helen Brown’s group, Civic Center Barrio Housing.

Over the ensuing years, Brown’s group has built or rehabilitated 44 units of rental housing and financed a 20-unit, owner-occupied housing development built largely by the residents themselves. An additional 17 rental units are being built by the corporation.

But Brown maintains that neither her group nor any other organization involved in low-income housing gets much respect--or money--from the city.

Under redevelopment law, the city must help relocate any residents displaced by a city-sponsored redevelopment project, and Santa Ana has a good record of doing that.

But Brown complains that the city spends funds that have been set aside for replacement housing on street and sewer improvements. And city officials acknowledge that a lot of the housing set-aside--which now totals about $5 million a year--is used for infrastructure improvements.

Redevelopment supporters say that the upgrading of business districts spills over into residential neighborhoods by promoting voluntary upgrading of homes and apartments.

When the redevelopment program began in 1973, there were only eight neighborhood homeowner or resident groups in the city, Hoffman said. Today there are 28.

Michael Metzler, executive director of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, credits redevelopment with improving Santa Ana residents’ image of the city.

“When I came here seven years ago, people living in Santa Ana had really low self-esteem. They would apologize for their address. But redevelopment has given us physical symbols that have promoted a better image.”

As do many other redevelopment boosters, Metzler points to the city’s Washington Square neighborhood as an example. Bounded by Civic Center Drive and Flower, 17th and Bristol streets, it is an area of cottages and bungalows built in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s that has been transformed in the past five years from a neighborhood in decline to one in ascendancy, with rising property values.

Because the downtown redevelopment area sits on two of the neighborhood’s borders, Metzler and others use it as an example of the spinoff effect that commercial development can have on residential areas.

Others scoff at the notion.

“Washington Square was a reaction, not a response,” said former mayor Bricken. “People in the city’s neighborhoods are afraid of what redevelopment will do to them, that’s why they are organizing. In Washington Square and French Park and other areas they are afraid redevelopment will come in and take away their single-family homes and replace them with multiple-family.”

But Bricken and Brown are in a distinct minority when it comes to redevelopment bashing.

“Santa Ana is the wave of the future,” Metzler says with enthusiasm. “We’ve got all of the problems the rest of the county will have in years to come, and we’re showing the rest of the county how to solve them.”

A New Face for the ‘90s

Home to 16% of Orange County’s 80,000 businesses, Santa Ana celebrates its 122nd birthday this year, aggressively seeking to bolster its economy and image through redevelopment.

NORTH HARBOR: Traditional strip commercial is being upgraded; adventurous developers have built a few residential projects. Look for a hotel and a 260,000-square-foot retail center.

SOUTH HARBOR: This industrial/commercial area has just begun picking up. Home of Nordstrom regional headquarters and light industrial firms. Hotels and high-rises on the horizon.

INTERCITY: Regional transportation center and business incubator help breathe life into city’s original industrial area. Hotels and high-rises are the outlook for the 4th and 1st Street corridors.

SOUTH MAIN: The most active redevelopment area, it has $1 billion worth of commercial and industrial projects with $1 billion more to come. Plans call for a sports arena and a five-city monorail.

BRISTOL: Basically a street widening project, Mayor Dan Young wants to extend proposed monorail down Bristol. Could open it to intensive development of all kinds.

DOWNTOWN: Intitial redevelopment area. Fiesta Marketplace and refurbished storefronts mark shopping district. Includes $400-million MainPlace Mail. A $400-million arts district is planned.

UP AND COMING

Ruben Martinez, 50, owner of Hacienda Hair Salon in downtown. Martinez is former treasurer of the county’s Democratic Party and was a leading critic of Republican leaders who posted guards at Santa Ana polling two years ago to keep non-citizens from attempting to vote.

Robert Richardson, 29, executive assistant to County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. Richardson is a member and former president of the Santa Ana Unified School District board. He is known for his knowledge of city economics and government.

Lisa C. Mills, 32, planning manager for the County Transportation Commission. Mills is a member of the city’s Planning Commission. She ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 1988 and is respected for her knowledge of planning and development issues.

The Rev. John McReynolds, 36, pastor of the Second Baptist Church. The Orange County Human Relations Commission honored him in March for his community work in attempting to break down barriers between the city’s different cultures.

Parker S. Kennedy, 41, president of First American Insurance, a 100-year-old title company with more than 4,500 offices and agents nationwide. It is the second-largest title firm in the nation. Kennedy, whose great-grandfather founded the company, hopes to expand his company’s reach into Canada.

Audrey Yamagota-Noji, 37, assistant dean of student services at Rancho Santiago College. She is president of the Santa Ana Unified School District board. In 1987, she was elected with a bloc of candidates who pledged to make the educational system more progressive.

Guy D. Ball, 36, electronic engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. He was recently appointed to the city’s Housing Advisory Commission. A former co-chair of the Wilshire Square Neighborhood Assn., he founded Eye on Santa Ana, a newsletter advocating community pride.

Rudy Castruita, 45, superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. Overseeing a 43,000-student system, he is the second Latino superintendent of an urban school district in California. He is known for being a strong and visible Latino role model.