200 Protest Plans by Register to Raze Their Apartments

Waving placards and pushing baby strollers, more than 200 people massed in the lobby of the Orange County Register on Monday and demanded a meeting with newspaper officials over plans to raze their apartments.

Residents of the Fruit Street apartments said they wanted to discuss the newspaper’s relocation proposal, particularly plans to give resettlement expenses to the more than 180 families to be displaced by the Register’s plant-expansion project.

But they were turned away by a Register representative who referred them to a relocation office in their neighborhood.

“Basically, they were told that there is no meeting scheduled and there never was,” explained Sue Hernandez, employment coordinator for the Register’s personnel office.

“The Register’s position is that we don’t own the property,” said Thomas M. Grochow, assistant to the general manager of the Orange County Register.

A flyer distributed to the mostly Latino tenants advised them to contact the Register’s relocation consultants, who have opened an office in one of 12 apartment complexes in the project area.

Adriana Brindis, president of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an organization that has battled on behalf of low-income tenants, said the residents will not be dissuaded.

“We will call these people at the Register again and see when they will meet with us,” she said.

Richard Spix, an attorney for Hermandad who said he represents many of the Fruit Street tenants and who helped lead Monday’s demonstration, said that if a settlement on fair relocation costs and other issues cannot be reached, the group may decide to file a legal challenge to the expansion project on environmental and other grounds.

“If we can handle these issues without litigation, obviously that would be preferable,” Spix said. “I’d rather see the money go into these people’s pockets instead of to lawyers.”

At issue are the Register’s plans to expand its current pressroom facilities over the next 25 years on six acres of land on the south side of Fruit Street, where the mostly Latino residents live. Many are packed six to 10 people per one- or two-bedroom apartment. Residents fear the the buildings will be demolished immediately and that they will not be able to find affordable housing for the amount in reimbursement costs that the newspaper would pay them.

Spix said residents also want the newspaper to plan demolition around the school year of the tenants’ children, most of whom are on year-round schedules. They also are concerned about getting security deposits back, and to ensure that as buildings are razed, efforts are made to eradicate rodents and any other pests that could migrate to neighboring apartments.

Grochow said plans call for relocation benefits ranging up to $4,000, with an average of $3,100 to $3,800. But he said tenants would have to get full details at the relocation office, in Apt. No. 5 at 1409 Fruit St.

“Anyone who has taken our offer to visit the office to discuss the plan, or the proposed relocation, would be given the correct information,” he said.

Grochow emphasized that while the newspaper management has an option to buy the property, no decision has been made to do so despite Santa Ana City Council approval of the project on Jan. 7.

That decision likely won’t be made until “we’re satisfied that all the legally required steps and waiting periods have gone by and city approval for all parts of the project has been granted,” Grochow said.

The newspaper is not legally required to provide relocation costs. They are doing so “because we’ve been in business in Santa Ana for 50 some years and we certainly have an understanding or at least a desire to address what are obviously reasonable needs for the relocation of this many people,” Grochow said.

But Spix called for reimbursements of up to $5,000 per family, plus a promise to pay another $1,500 per unit into a special fund to increase low-cost housing in Santa Ana.