Image and Substance : Federal Aid Seen as Key to Reshaping Business Environment
Andres Solorzano had a quick recovery plan after his restaurant burned to the ground during the rioting in Compton.
He asked the council for permission to put a catering truck on the site so that he could continue working and feed his family. Council members sympathized but denied his request.
Their idea for rebuilding Compton after the April civil unrest does not include a catering truck squatting amid the rubble of a burned-out restaurant. Instead, they encouraged Solorzano to apply for government assistance and low-interest loans to begin another restaurant.
“We need to take advantage of the federal money being offered,” Mayor Walter R. Tucker III explained. “Then we’ll be able to rebuild a better Compton.”
City officials want to change the image of their city--now seen as a high-risk place to do business--and attract more manufacturing with higher-paying jobs, Tucker said.
Final figures released by the city show that rioting in Compton destroyed 63 buildings, damaged 34 and left hundreds out of work. But it also created an opportunity to rebuild a more modern city, one more responsive to the needs of this mostly black and Latino community, city leaders say.
City officials want presidential orders to force banks to invest in the inner city, they said in a 25-page draft plan for economic recovery published within two weeks of the disturbances. They want assurances that capital will be set aside to help minority-owned businesses.
They also want increased funding of social programs, grants for job training and rehabilitation of city streets and water and sewer lines, and special legislation to stop burned-out liquor stores from being rebuilt. And they want access to technical assistance from government planners.
The city is applying for a wide range of state and federal loans and grants, hoping to patch together a citywide overhaul, Redevelopment Director Laurence A. Adams said. The plans are ambitious, and nobody knows when or even whether federal and state officials will allocate the funds.
The federal government is pushing two plans for rebuilding riot-torn areas: a “weed-and-seed” program and enterprise zones.
“Weed-and-seed” programs allocate extra funds for law enforcement, particularly to weed out gangs, drug dealers and other criminals from communities, and provide seed money for social service programs. Exactly how much money will be available through weed and seed is not known.
Enterprise zones are designed to attract new businesses to impoverished areas through tax incentives, thereby raising the area’s tax base.
“Enterprise zones would be a tremendous shot in the arm to this city,” said Alfred A. DelliBovi, deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development, during a recent tour of Compton.
Compton certainly won’t turn down weed-and-seed money or a designation as an enterprise zone, Tucker said. In fact, the city applied to the state to become an enterprise zone weeks before the riot , but has not been accepted yet. But officials fear these programs are all the government will offer.
“Enterprise zones, weed and seed--these aren’t the magic bullets,” Tucker said.
“We need help with job skills training. We need more money from HUD to create a middle-income housing base. We need credit extended to our people so they can create their own businesses. We need empowerment.”
One city staff idea to bring new economic life to the minority community is a business incubator, where would-be entrepreneurs would receive everything from advice and financial aid to support services, said Arlene Williams, an economic development specialist for Compton. Entrepreneurs with worthy ideas would be given office space within the “incubator” building until the company becomes financially independent.
Like many of the city’s rebuilding ideas, the business incubator would require a financial commitment from both the public and private sector, city officials said. They’ve applied for federal and state grants that seem to support such ideas, but Williams said they don’t know whether the incubator will win funding.
“Sometimes we have to force-fit what we want into the form of what grants are available,” Williams said. “We have to be creative about this, because we know now that nobody is going to step up to the table and just hand us money.”
The city has filed three applications for grants with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and one to the Economic Development Administration.
Timothy Iverson, director of the city’s Economic and Grants Management Services, also said the city is exploring grants from local corporations and private foundations.
In the meantime, the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent a check to Compton for $455,139, about half of the estimated cost of emergency services--varying from police and fire overtime to the use of a city-managed hotel for an emergency operation center, said Ruth Austen, FEMA spokeswoman.
The grants and loans will not necessarily help independent business people such as Solorzano, however. He hopes for a government loan and a new building, but in the meantime he has opened a restaurant in a rented building.
After his catering truck plan was turned down, Solorzano found another restaurant site on East Rosecrans Boulevard, two blocks from his restaurant, and set up another El Infierno. This was a lucky break, Solorzano says, but it isn’t the same. He does not own this restaurant. He no longer walks on the floor that he installed himself. He lost more than $50,000 in equipment.
He would like to return to his old site, to the business he built up and nurtured for seven years. Solorzano filled out applications for low-interest government loans recently, but he doesn’t have much faith that they will come through.
“I don’t have a lot of trust for the government,” Solorzano said. “But I want to stay in Compton. I like the people. There are problems here, but I’m used to it.”
