Watts Area to Get Family Restaurant--First Since Riots

After church on Sundays Betty White and her Watts-Willowbrook friends usually don’t feel much like cooking. But finding a restaurant, she said, is a frustrating cross-town excursion.

“There’s no place in our community to sit down and eat a good meal,” White, 60, said. “I drive all the way to Lakewood.”

What would be an unnoticed event in most other parts of Los Angeles--groundbreaking for another franchise restaurant--turned into a momentous affair for White and about 150 others who gathered Wednesday in a lot along the 11800 block of South Wilmington Avenue.

In about three months, the opening of a 150-seat Denny’s restaurant will mark the first time since the Watts riots 26 years ago that a large, family-style restaurant will operate in the community, Los Angeles County officials said.

“People in other parts of Los Angeles have all the conveniences, all the chain restaurants they need. This is our first,” said White, a 45-year Willowbrook resident. “And it used to be just broken-down houses and broken glass right here.”

The restaurant, across the street from Martin Luther King Jr./Charles R. Drew Medical Center and in the shadow of Century Freeway construction, will be located in the Kenneth Hahn Shopping Plaza--a $24-million supermarket, drugstore and home improvement center that opened in 1987, financed largely with government grants and bonds.

The area is part of unincorporated Los Angeles County and is located in a redevelopment zone.

The only restaurants developers could lure into the area were fast-food outlets, a McDonald’s and a Taco Bell. Neighborhood residents complained that the nearest restaurant is a Sizzler in Compton. For years they have had to travel to Lynwood, Downey, Inglewood or downtown Los Angeles to be served by a waiter.

“Since the riots, no major restaurant has wanted to be in this community,” said Los Angeles entrepreneur Donald J. Bohana, the owner of the Denny’s, which will cost $800,000 to build and open.

“People have told me that investing in anything south of Vernon (Avenue) is just a no-no,” Bohana said. “But I see a hospital across the street with 2,000 employees, a shopping center with 400 employees and a community with no place to sit down and eat.”

For community leaders like Trudi Stewart, 50, a member of a resident advisory committee on neighborhood redevelopment issues, the opening of a chain restaurant that serves chicken, meat, potatoes, burgers, shakes and salads symbolizes a step forward toward revitalizing their neighborhood.

“This area has a reputation for being a no-touch site and big chains have passed us by in the past,” Stewart said. “So this is a milestone for us . . . and we are welcoming this restaurant.”

During the hourlong groundbreaking ceremony, a stage full of community leaders heaped praise on Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who announced last Thursday that he would retire in December, 1992, after nearly four decades of service. He shared the stage with ex-Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who said last week that she may run in the June election for the 2nd Supervisorial District seat.

Some in the crowd whispered that “the race has begun” when she briefly spoke. But it was Hahn who they rewarded with a standing ovation and cheers when he declared, “This is not my swan song. I’ll be here for a while longer.”

As the assembly broke up at about 1 p.m. a group of hungry county officials huddled to discuss lunch plans.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Guy Crowder, a county photographer. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” his companion responded. “There isn’t anything around here.”