Inglewood Wages Image War With Studios : Publicity: Officials are upset about negative portrayal in the film ‘Grand Canyon.’ Their campaign extols city’s virtues.

Inglewood likes to project itself as a progressive, multiethnic community populated by professionals, bullish on business and anxious to attract high rollers.

But a far more popular view is one of a city in decline, a place where fear rules the streets and hopelessness clings to the town like an ill-fitting suit.

The latest blow came in the film “Grand Canyon,” which offers the city as an example of contemporary urban decay, a place filled with roving gangs, bloodstained sidewalks and terror-stricken residents.

The images surfaced just months after the city launched a full-court publicity blitz promoting its virtues, including its place as a prime filming location.

“How do you get rid of the alligators and drain the swamp at the same time?” asked Truman Jacques, a former KCBS television talk show host who is being paid $80,000 a year to help spin a better image for the city. “That’s the problem we face. When people perceive you as being at the bottom of the totem pole, nobody really cares what you say. We just don’t have enough clout.”

When the venerable Times of London did a front-page story on Earvin (Magic) Johnson’s retirement this year, it referred to the home of the Lakers as “Inglenook,” leaving a bad taste in the mouths of city leaders who have become increasingly image-conscious.

City officials complain that instead of focusing on its position as the nationally televised home to the Lakers, Kings and Hollywood Park as well as two state-of-the-art medical facilities, the city is unfairly portrayed as the mythical land of “Inglewatts.”

City officials went on the offensive last week, threatening to ban movie production in Inglewood unless the producers of “Grand Canyon” apologize for depicting the city as a crime-torn ghetto.

“Inglewood is such a beautiful place in many ways,” said Terry Coleman, an activist who has lived in the city for more than 20 years. “There are parts of it that need cleaning up, no doubt about it. But the problems in Inglewood are the same as in Los Angeles. On the whole it’s a great city, but it has a few bad spots that get all the attention.”

The picture that officials want to spread is one of a nine-square-mile city that still reflects its middle-class roots.

Quiet, tree-lined residential streets dominate the city’s avenues, although there are pockets of run-down neighborhoods just as bad as in any inner city.

One street can separate quiet, well-tended neighborhoods from high-crime transient areas. On one side of Crenshaw Boulevard, rows of well-tended homes offer a glimpse of suburban life. On the other, a series of run-down apartment houses rented to mostly poor Latino families reveal the changing face of the city.

For change has been one of the only constants in the city, a blue-collar, middle-class suburb for most of its 84-year history. It is a city that has gone from exclusively white to predominantly black to more than 40% Latino during the last half-century.

Before the city’s white majority began fleeing in the late 1950s to bigger homes in neighboring suburbs, many of the titles on city homes contained clauses barring sales to nonwhites.

Coleman, who is president of the United Democratic Club of Inglewood, believes that the scatter-gun development along Century Boulevard has left a black mark on the city because it is what people remember when they drive to Los Angeles International Airport or a Lakers game at the Forum.

Closer to the airport, a series of gritty, industrial warehouses, body shops and other small businesses fill the landscape. Along many of the major thoroughfares, mini-malls rule the day. There are few new housing developments except for Carlton Square, where Mayor Edward Vincent lives, across from the Forum.

The city’s population is a microcosm of demographic changes taking place throughout the state. The 1990 census offers these statistics: In the last decade, Inglewood’s white population has dropped by more than half, while the number of Latinos has more than doubled.

More than 90% of the city’s 110,000 residents are minorities; 55,000 are black and 42,000 are Latino. The Asian-American population jumped 65% since 1980, to 2,300 residents.

At the same time, according to the latest estimates, the city’s median household income has kept pace with that in Los Angeles, rising from $15,000 in 1980 to almost $33,000 last year.

“When people ask if I’m afraid to live here, I just tell them that I don’t have to walk out of my house and see a mirror image of myself in order to be happy,” said Brenda Conyers, who is white and whose family has lived in Inglewood for four generations. “Inglewood is so culturally diverse that it’s more interesting than a lot of other communities.

“It’s a popular thing to prey on the belief that black people are dangerous. And there’s not a lot the city can do to change it. But the people that know Inglewood know you can live perfectly normal lives here.”

Despite its location next to the airport, proximity to the coast and easy freeway access, the city has been stymied in its pursuit of top-end retailers. Since the J.C. Penney outlet shut its doors in downtown Inglewood more than a decade ago and the huge Sears store closed in 1988, the city has been without a major department store.

City supporters complain that they are being unfairly compared with wealthier, white suburbs in the South Bay--the very places that have been able to lure major mall developers while Inglewood’s downtown has been transformed into a series of swap meet stores and discount shops.

“In the rich, white communities like Marina del Rey, they will stack malls on top of each other,” City Councilman Garland Hardeman said. “The climate is ripe here for commercial development. But developers aren’t coming through and saying we want to do business with you.”

The city’s Redevelopment Agency recently landed a K mart outlet and cites the opening of a huge Home Club as recent retail successes. But developers have told the city that with so many regional shopping malls near Inglewood there is little need to add another within its boundaries.

“We’re not drawing the I. Magnins and Macy’s but the smaller-scale shops that appeal to the people in our community,” said Jesse Lewis, head of the city’s Redevelopment Agency. “We’re trying to position ourselves in a market where we can be successful.”

City officials proudly point out that two schools serving low-income minority areas, Bennet-Kew and William Kelso Elementary schools, produce top test scores, often exceeding their counterparts in wealthier areas.

And the city has reams of affordable housing: A $400,000 custom home near Regents Circle would cost more than $1 million on the Westside while a three-bedroom, two-bath home in one of the city’s best neighborhoods still goes for close to $200,000.

Although Inglewood has more than three times as many residents as several adjacent South Bay cities, it has few of the amenities common to most other communities. The city does not have a movie theater or a major hotel. And even the city’s crown jewels--the Forum and Hollywood Park racetrack--could not save the city’s largest inn, which closed several months ago.

Civic leaders note, however, that while other well-heeled cities, such as Beverly Hills, recently have suffered financial problems, the city remains in the black and did not require layoffs or cuts to balance its budget. For while the city has not fared well in attracting business, it has received a significant financial boost from the sales tax revenues generated by the Forum and Hollywood Park.

Still, it hasn’t been enough to attract investors. One developer who considered building in the city noted the lack of any destination stores in Inglewood. “People need a reason to come here, and so far, many of them don’t have one,” said the developer, who asked to remain unidentified. “Nobody wants to be the first one to gamble on the city.”

Perhaps the biggest blemish on the city’s reputation has been Inglewood’s crime problem. Police recorded 59 homicides in 1990, a record for the city, and one of the highest murder rates in the nation on a per-capita basis. Although voters approved a new tax to add 20 officers to the police force, the department has one of the lowest rates for solving murders in the country, according to a recent study done by an acting captain with the department.

City officials have attributed that rise to accelerating gang violence throughout Los Angeles County and note that other cities, such as Compton, had a more dramatic rise in homicides.

The city recently has been cracking down on gangs, stepping up enforcement of the city’s juvenile curfew ordinance and engaging in sweeps of well-known gang areas. Inglewood also has one of the most aggressive anti-graffiti programs in the county, prompting city parks director Les Curtis to say: “If any graffiti goes up on Friday, it’s gone by Monday.”

The gung-ho efforts, though, are all but lost when a national movie appears depicting Inglewood as a place where yuppies fear to tread, civic leaders say.

“I truly believe in freedom of speech, but to tarnish the image of a community without knowing the community, I think, is irresponsible,” said Councilman Jose Fernandez. “We have problems just like every other urban area. But something like this is a slap in the face to Inglewood and to minorities throughout the country.”

It may be unfair, but other civic officials who sympathize with Inglewood say the damage may be insurmountable. They note that few cities that have struggled with poor reputations have been able to free themselves from the shadow.

Compton residents grew so tired of hearing about that city’s problems that they ignored what was said. But it got so bad that several communities, including Gardena, Hawthorne, Lawndale and Redondo Beach, erased the name Compton Boulevard from their maps and renamed the streets.

“Images are reality when you’re dealing with the visitor industry,” said Michael Collins, vice president for public affairs with the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. “When you’re selling a city, it’s not much different from selling a consumer product and the most successful ones package their image on their own terms.

“But changing the hearts and minds of a national audience is a monumental task. And for Inglewood to do it would be a significant challenge. Not because it’s so difficult, because it’s really very simple, but because it’s so very, very expensive since it can only be one with a broad-based media campaign.”

As it is, even Inglewood’s biggest boosters question the idea of spending nearly $150,000 for a Rose Parade float and a public relations person to bolster the city’s image. They contend that the money should be spent on education, or park improvements or anything that will improve the city--without trying to persuade the world that Inglewood is one of the Southland’s hidden treasures.

“I couldn’t ask for a safer neighborhood than the one I live in but I have friends in Orange County who won’t come to visit me because they’re scared to come to Inglewood,” says 91-year-old Gladys Waddingham, the city’s resident historian who has lived in Inglewood since 1922. “Now if you can’t convince somebody who lives 30 miles away, how can you convince everybody else?”