Coalition Seeks to Reshape, Not Just Rebuild, Torn City : Riots: Volunteer architects, nonprofit builders meet with residents to draft grass-roots plan for recovery.

In much of suburban Southern California, outside the areas where stores were being burned and looted, many residents repeatedly asked a single question: Why are people destroying their own communities?

But this was no mystery to those in the inner city, and Ivon Allen, who has lived in South-Central Los Angeles for more than 40 years, responded with a brief answer: “Many of us don’t feel like it’s our community anymore.”

To change this perception, a volunteer coalition of architects, planners, nonprofit developers and residents has met frequently during the past two months and mapped out an ambitious strategy to reshape--rather than simply rebuild--the riot-torn neighborhoods.

The key, members say, is to initiate a new kind of planning where the residents, not developers or city officials, make critical planning decisions. Residents will then have a stake in the communities because they will be deciding what kinds of businesses and services their neighborhood needs, where the buildings should go and how they should be designed.

“If it all comes back just the way it was, in 10 or 20 years people will just burn it down again,” said Michaele Pride-Wells, an architect and volunteer with the neighborhood planning project. “People want something better now.”

This new plan to revitalize more than 10 low-income neighborhoods--with possibly more to follow--has drawn wide support. Nonprofit developers have pledged funds. Building professionals have donated their services. And both Rebuild L.A. and the city Planning Department are working with the coalition.

Still, this innovative attempt at neighborhood planning faces a number of obstacles. Los Angeles is a city with a long tradition of neglecting detailed planning, where officials often are influenced by the whims of developers who frequently oppose strong planning measures.

In the aftermath of the riots, city officials also face pressure to speed the rebuilding process and create jobs rather than spend additional time encouraging neighborhood planning efforts. Two weeks after the riots, the City Council passed an ordinance that waives public hearings for many businesses so property owners can quickly rebuild without facing extensive neighborhood scrutiny.

The neighborhood planning program also must overcome the burden of history. There was a similar outpouring of good will in the 1960s, after civil disturbances in Watts, Newark, Washington, D.C, and other cities. But eventually, the donated money was spent, the volunteers returned to their own neighborhoods and, in the end, nothing much changed.

Some supporters insist that the outcome in Los Angeles will be different this time.

“In the past, a lot of outsiders came into the communities, told people what they needed and offered quick-fix solutions,” said Lori Speese, director of Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit lender and developer in South Los Angeles. “This time, residents are going to be involved from the beginning . . . and there’s going to be a partnership in the community that will be searching for some real solutions to these terrible problems.”

This neighborhood planning program, Speese said, could eventually have a wide-ranging impact. If enough detailed plans are completed, planning officials said, they could be incorporated into the city’s community plan process, which establishes official city policy for development.

The focus of the residents’ concern is to ensure that what is rebuilt--on both the burned-out sites and long abandoned lots--does not just duplicate what was there before. They do not want the same shabby strip malls rebuilt with the same melange of liquor stores, fast-food restaurants and check-cashing centers. They hope to attract supermarkets, banks, movie theaters, libraries and community centers, residents say.

The riot-torn areas of the city have long suffered from poor planning. In wealthier neighborhoods, residents in many cases have been able to overcome weak city planning by doing their own planning. They have the clout and the money to block unpopular projects, hire land-use attorneys and get city ordinances drafted that protect their neighborhoods.

For example, when affluent residents of Los Angeles’ hillsides became alarmed about the tide of mansion building, they wielded enough clout to have an ordinance proposed that would restrict development in their neighborhoods.

But in places such as South Los Angeles, residents often were told by property owners to be grateful for any project, any economic development in their neighborhood. As a result, it does not take a planning expert to spot the shabby jumble of liquor stores, strip malls and swap meets that reflect woeful planning.

During the past few decades, Ivon Allen has seen her neighborhood, near Vernon and Central Avenues, deteriorate. As she drives past the once-thriving business district, she points out the liquor stores on the sites where there once were markets, the swap meets where there once were department stores, the check-cashing centers where there once were banks. She stops at an intersection on Central Avenue, now a neglected strip of hamburger stands, burned-out lots and boarded-up buildings, and points to the downtown skyline, shimmering in the distance.

“That’s where all the attention went after the Watts rebellion,” said Allen, a neighborhood block club captain, who moved to South-Central Los Angeles in 1949. “Down here, we were forgotten. I hope this time is different.”

She is hoping that the neighborhood plan program will mark the difference between Watts in 1965 and the riots in 1992. So for the past couple months, Allen, a retired administrator with the Los Angeles Unified School District, has been attending meetings and helping gather data for her community’s neighborhood plan.

The idea for this type of planning effort was born a few days after the riots when Speese of Neighborhood Housing Services began organizing meetings among residents to determine how to rebuild their neighborhoods. The residents felt that they could not count on local government or business leaders to solve their problems; they had to do it for themselves. Many of the residents, however, do not have the skills and expertise to plan, design and rebuild a community.

But hundreds of people who do have the expertise have volunteered. Organizations such as the Design Professional Coalition, a group of more than 100 architects, engineers and designers, were formed to aid in the rebuilding. A group of more than 20 nonprofit neighborhood developers was formed to guide the progress and help raise funds. And the city Planning Department has pledged staff members and technical assistance.

During the past month, residents in several South Los Angeles neighborhoods have been holding meetings and drawing up detailed lists of businesses and services they need in their communities.

After the residents complete the “needs assessment,” market studies will be done to determine the demand for certain types of businesses. More detailed plans will then be drawn up for the neighborhood rebuilding. When property owners prepare to rebuild, architects will volunteer their services in hopes of encouraging developers to build structures that look better than what was there before.

“Many poor areas need good design more than other areas of the city,” said Bruce Sternberg, a chairman for the Design Professional Coalition. “It’s hard for people to feel a pride and a connection to a blighted neighborhood. So when all this anger and frustration erupted during the riots, people didn’t have a problem destroying some of these areas.”

Residents will not be able to force property owners, in many cases, to build one kind of business instead of another, to improve the quality of the design or to add landscaping. But with the proper market research and detailed assessment of community needs, they can have a strong influence, Sternberg said.

With the neighborhood plans in place, it will be easier to attract business to the area, said Jackie Dupont-Walker, a staff member of Rebuild L.A. If a supermarket chain, for example, informs Rebuild L.A. that it wants to open a market in a low-income neighborhood, and a neighborhood plan identifies an ideal site, “a match can be made,” she said. And if the right kinds of businesses are lured to the inner cities, it will mean more jobs for residents.

Not all property owners will be influenced by the neighborhood plans. But, organizers say they are counting on enough businesses to cooperate that it will make a major difference in the rebuilding effort.

The first three plans--in the Vernon-Central, Adams-Hoover and Crenshaw district neighborhoods--should be completed within three months. Another seven plans in South Los Angeles and Pico-Union and a few in low-income areas of the Eastside that were not affected by the riots should be completed a few months later.

Fund-raising efforts already have shown success. More than $600,000 has been raised from nonprofit developers and lenders, architectural organizations and other groups, and organizers have applied for national grants.

Some are hopeful the process will help solve other problems. Many residents in the inner city have long complained that they do not receive the same city services as those in more affluent areas.

So in addition to targeting more libraries and community centers, the neighborhood plans, for example, could be detailed enough to include an inventory of potholes and neighborhoods where there are problems with trash pickup and police response, planners say. Those plans could then be sent to the city agencies responsible for the problems.

“In the past, residents had very little opportunity to make changes in their neighborhoods,” said Pedro Newbern, president the National Organization of Minority Architects’ Los Angeles chapter. “There’s always been a strong business lobby in L.A. who called the shots and directed development the way they wanted it. But now, for the first time, the residents themselves will have the chance to make important decisions so the same problems aren’t repeated all over again.”