Renovation Plan for Olvera Street Stirs Outcry From Latinos

Ethnic pride, business interests and historical visions are combining and clashing in a dispute over the future of Olvera Street, one of the city’s most famous tourist attractions.

A long-delayed restoration for the downtown landmark and the surrounding El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Park inched ahead slightly last week with the city’s decision to prepare guidelines for what is likely to be a multimillion-dollar face lift.

But no sooner had a draft of the guidelines been issued than an outcry arose from many of the 75 merchants who run the restaurants, souvenir shops and taco stands that operate along Olvera Street--an attraction opened in 1930 and designed to re-create a Mexican marketplace.

The merchants, joined by an impressive cast of Latino politicians, historians and entertainment industry notables, accused the city of encouraging development that would “dilute” the Mexican-American flavor of Olvera Street.

Among their objections: While Olvera Street itself will be preserved as a Mexican-theme commercial strip, the parallel storefronts facing North Main and North Alameda streets may be used to “reflect a different historic character,” in the words of the city document that spells out the guidelines.

Since immigrants of various nationalities lived in the El Pueblo Park area over the centuries, exhibits highlighting different ethnic groups also will be allowed. Already, there are plans for a Chinese-American History Museum in the Garnier Building, erected in 1890 at the southern end of Olvera Street as stores and apartments for Chinese businessmen.

“The Mexican presence in El Pueblo is being relegated to the alley, Olvera Street proper,” complained Vivien Bonzo, president of the Olvera Street Merchants Assn. and leader of a campaign to have the guidelines changed.

“A multi-ethnic usage would not be fair,” Bonzo added. “There are ways to represent the history of Los Angeles, including its multi-ethnicity, but it should not come at the expense of the Mexican history that is being portrayed here.”

Moctezuma Esparza, producer of the film “The Milagro Beanfield War” and a supporter of the merchants’ efforts, concurred: “We have an ancestry that predates all other immigrants.” He and others, Esparza said, are distressed that the Mexican flavor of Olvera Street “is being systematically erased.”

City officials and historians involved in the El Pueblo restoration project denied there is any intention to reduce the Mexican-American presence.

“We are mandated to preserve the Mexican marketplace of Olvera Street. That’s a very important part of the park and, of course, it must be preserved,” said senior curator Jean Bruce Poole.

But, she added, “The other history exists (too), and it should be told.”

While it remains a popular tourist spot, Olvera Street and its surroundings are considered a bit run-down, some buildings are in need of earthquake reinforcement and officials want more parking.

The merchants and their supporters, who formed an ad-hoc committee called the Los Angeles Mexican Conservancy, also are demanding a greater role for Latino historians in planning the El Pueblo Park restoration. They were angered that the guidelines made reference to the “Romance of California” period as a model for Mexican costumes and decorations that should be used on Olvera Street.

During the Romance period, from the late 1800s to early 1900s, the styles and trappings of Mexican culture were regarded merely as “cute backdrops,” said Antonio Rios-Bustamante, a researcher at the University of Arizona’s Mexican American Studies and Research Center. Rios-Bustamante, a member of the ad-hoc group, said that using that era as a model would be to reinforce Mexican stereotypes.

Other guidelines, such as suggestions that the merchants and their employees wear costumes and greet customers in Spanish, were labeled as “patronizing.”

Some officials said the merchants had jumped to the wrong conclusions in their reading of the document, which is more than 100 pages long. They noted that many of the disputed guidelines were draft recommendations and not hard-and-fast requirements. One city official described the protests as an attempt to prevent the recommendations from being enacted, though premature.

Although the merchant group has been most vocal about questions of ethnic and cultural integrity, questions of who will control Olvera Street and who will have first shot at its ample commercial opportunities also are fueling the dispute.

The merchants for years opposed development until they could ensure their place in shaping the project and be certain they would not be driven out by jacked-up rents once the property is renovated.

Bonzo, for example, complained that the city’s current guidelines would cut into the space used by her restaurant, La Golondrina, possibly driving her out or forcing her to scale back service. For 60 years, the restaurant has occupied a building constructed in 1850 for the Italian Pelanconi family.

Members of the merchants association also had expressed fears that unless they have say over the developer that ultimately is chosen, the project could end up in the hands of the political cronies of high-ranking city officials.

The Recreation and Park commissioners, after listening to members of the Los Angeles Mexican Conservancy and others at a hearing last week, delayed approval of the guidelines until May 14 and recommended incorporation of a series of amendments from Mayor Tom Bradley.

The amendments reflect an election-eve compromise forged last year with the merchants at the behest of Bradley and two prominent Latino politicians, Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles) and City Councilman Richard Alatorre. The pact gives the merchants partial ownership of the project and relocation payments while their places of business undergo renovation.

“None of us want it (Olvera Street) to be another McDonald’s. None of us want it to be another Disneyland,” Alatorre said last week. “We are committed to making sure the integrity of Olvera Street is maintained.”

Meanwhile, the emphasis on commercial development has some historians worried.

Some plans that would double the amount of retail space could severly damage the historical character of El Pueblo Park, said Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit architectural preservation organization.

“The charm of Olvera Street comes from the small, intimate scale of its historical old buildings,” Rounds said. “When new construction and modern malls and pedestrian bridges are introduced, you lose something important about the sense of place.”

The history of the area has been somewhat spotty, if colorful.

It was the site where a group of colonists arrived in 1781 and founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles. In 1818, the family of Mayor Don Francisco Avila built on Olvera Street what was then the village’s finest home and now the city’s oldest adobe.

California’s best hotel south of San Francisco was functioning by 1875 in the three-story Italian palazzo built in 1869 by Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California.

The late 1800s saw a growth in light-industrial buildings and machine shops. By the early 1900s, the area had begun to decline, given to brothels and bars. Christine Sterling, a society matriarch who would lead the movement to establish and preserve Olvera Street as a Mexican marketplace, described the area in her diary in 1928 as “an open sewer.”

Sterling, with the help of civic leaders of the day, dedicated the Olvera Street marketplace as a homage to Mexican culture in 1930. Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge, argues that since then, Mexicans and other Latinos began to find their roots at Olvera Street, reviving and revering it as “Los Angeles’ Bethlehem.”