Bradley Unveils His Revitalization Plan for Inner-City Area : Renewal: Program targets poverty, crime, dilapidated housing in South-Central neighborhood. Skeptics say similar promises made in the past have gone unfulfilled.

Mayor Tom Bradley returned to the streets of his childhood Friday--an inner-city neighborhood marred by poverty, street crime and dilapidated housing--and announced it would be the first target in a sweeping, multimillion-dollar program to restore South-Central Los Angeles.

“I used to live here--and I said, ‘I want to see my neighborhood cleaned up,’ ” the five-term mayor told about 200 spectators, aides and political supporters gathered at the corner of 46th Street and Central Avenue. “We want this place to sparkle.”

Bradley, 72, who has been criticized for allowing inner-city neighborhoods to sink deeper into poverty while developers built huge office towers downtown, announced a seven-point program involving cooperation between the city and private business, including banks that will make low-interest loans to small businesses.

The program also will include low-interest city loans to homeowners; improved trash collection services; a new police substation; the replacement of through streets with cul de sacs to discourage drug trafficking and street crime; 100 units of low-cost housing to be built by the city; and the refurbishment of 200 existing homes using donated paint and inner-city workers.

Still, a number of residents, who have watched the 60-year-old neighborhood decline despite promises of help from City Hall, expressed skepticism of the mayor’s plan.

“They never do nothing until they’re getting ready for election; then they all show up,” said Joseph Augustine, 70, a retired foundry worker who has lived in the community since 1946.

Anna Mae Gill, owner of a dry cleaning shop on Central Avenue, expressed similar disbelief in the area’s planned rebirth, saying, “My whiskers will probably be dragging the floor when it happens. They’ve been talking about revitalizing it for the last 20 years now. They were saying that we’re going to tear all of this down and we could rebuild, buy it back, all that stuff. That’s all it’s been--promises, promises.”

Bradley, who grew up a mile south of the target area on 57th Street a block from Central Avenue, acknowledged in his remarks that there have been naysayers. But the agreements already worked out are evidence that those skeptics are wrong, Bradley said.

“This program is starting and it’s happening,” he said, remembering one critic who insisted, “ ‘Ain’t nothing going to happen here.’ To those who had any doubts in the past, let me tell you that this community, its various agencies, various elected officials, will deliver.”

Bradley’s announcement comes less than a month after the death of 9th District Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay, another target of criticism from some black community activists who said the ailing councilman had inadequately represented their interests at City Hall. Some maintain that Bradley is taking the spotlight at a time when he may want to endorse a possible successor to Lindsay and when dissatisfaction in the black community is especially high.

“I think there was definitely . . . a recognition of the feeling of discontent, a feeling of anger,” Herbert F. Troupe, member of the activist group The Black Agenda, said of Bradley’s action. “My God, it’s so obviously needed. It is something that the community perceives is really necessary. They are hoping against hope that something will begin to happen.”

Bradley outlined details of his program against a backdrop of gleaming new automated trash trucks while a city work crew painted out graffiti covering the walls of a nearby market. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, other walls--splashed heavily with gang graffiti--stood neglected. Men loitered on street corners. Residents looked out their windows from behind wrought-iron security bars.

Years ago, Central Avenue was a business and cultural hub of Los Angeles’ black community, featuring everything from doctors’ offices to busy nightclubs. Now, however, Central is dotted with liquor stores, run-down storefronts and vacant lots.

The community is poor--the estimated annual median household income is $12,000--and ethnically changing. Blacks, who once predominated, now make up slightly more than half, or 56%, of the population. An estimated 41% of the residents are Latinos.

“You can stand right in the middle of Central Avenue and look at all the big money they’ve been spending downtown,” said George Clemmons, 55, a retired welder. “But you just look around here and you see that it’s been neglected. . . . The buildings are boarded up. The businessmen around here just don’t have the money to repair them.”

The mayor’s plan--which affects a 40-block area containing about 5,000 homes--is the culmination of more than a year of work by a 72-member South-Central task force made up of residents, business owners, city department heads and members of the mayor’s staff. The work began 18 months ago, at a time when the 88-year-old Lindsay’s health was declining.

William Elkins, the mayor’s special assistant who chairs the task force, called the plan the first step in a long-range effort to revitalize nearly all of South-Central. The existing target area is bounded on the north by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, on the east by Hooper Avenue, on the south by Vernon Avenue and on the west by McKinley Avenue.

Eventually, Elkins said, the program will expand to a much larger area encompassing about 750,000 residents--bounded on the north by Washington Boulevard, on the east by Alameda Street, on the south by 120th Street and on the west by the Harbor Freeway.

Elkins acknowledged that some residents have complained that the mayor and the city are not doing enough, but downplayed the criticisms. Bradley, he said, has made “a commitment not to let that community go to hell. I don’t know any other way to say that.”

The program--whose overall cost has not yet been determined, according to the mayor’s office--includes attempts to beautify as well as inject economic vitality into the community. Residents will be eligible for home-improvement loans up to $25,000 at interest rates from 0% to 9%. Business owners, who in the past have had difficulty obtaining bank loans, will be able to draw from a $5-million pool put up by a consortium of area banks.

In addition, a 25-member city refurbishment team will paint and do minor repair work--including electrical and plumbing jobs--to as many as 200 homes. Hot lines have been created so that residents can request the pickup of bulky trash items such as old furniture and appliances and ask for the removal of dead animals.

Although no extra police officers are being assigned, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division is opening a substation at 43rd Street and McKinley Avenue in a building once owned by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Thirteen streets within the target area are blocked with concrete barricades to hamper drug trafficking. Those streets will be turned into cul de sacs by means of metal gates donated by private industry. Only police and firefighters will hold the master keys.

The city’s newly created Housing Department pledged to create 100 low-cost units in the year ahead and 300 to 400 new units in coming years in the expanded target area.

Bradley acknowledged that the target area is only a small portion of Los Angeles’ large and needy inner city. Nonetheless, he was upbeat, joking with bystanders and congratulating aides and departments heads on what they had accomplished.

“In short,” Bradley declared, “the revitalization of South-Central is here.”

Revitalization The Bradley Administration and Los Angeles police have selected this impoverished neighborhood in South-Central to refurbish as part of a mutifaceted effort by the public and private sectors.