Redevelopment Proposal Shot Down in Court : Hawthorne: A judge invalidates a plan for construction in the north end, but disagrees with plaintiffs’ allegations of discrimination.

Hawthorne’s controversial proposal to redevelop 254 acres in the city’s largely Latino and black north end was declared invalid this week by a Superior Court judge, but city officials said they may be able to keep the project alive.

In a 12-page ruling signed and mailed July 7, San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Carl E. Davis said the city failed to prove that the buildings it wanted to tear down to make room for new construction were unsafe and unfit under state health and safety codes.

Under the law, only buildings prone to “ill health, transmission of disease, infant mortality, juvenile delinquency, and crime” can be considered blighted enough to warrant redevelopment, he said.

The suit against the city was brought by three Hawthorne residents, five school districts and Los Angeles County after the City Council voted in December, 1990, to add 17 parcels to its redevelopment plans, the bulk of them along Imperial Highway and Hawthorne Boulevard.

City officials said they were surprised and disappointed by the ruling because it seemed unlikely that the areas could improve without the assistance of redevelopment--a complex process that allows cities to aid private developers in the purchase and renovation of properties that have fallen into disrepair.

“It’s real hard for me to imagine anyone looking at Imperial Highway and concluding that it is not blighted,” said Bud Cormier, assistant director of Hawthorne’s Redevelopment Agency. “There are buildings in serious disrepair (and) . . . there is what I would call economic blight in the sense that there are businesses just barely eking out an existence.”

City officials have not yet decided whether they will appeal Davis’ decision, Cormier said. But he added that settlement talks under way with attorneys for the plaintiffs could allow the city to move forward with a scaled-down redevelopment plan, making an appeal unnecessary.

“At least some of the parties have an interest in seeing redevelopment going ahead anyway,” Cormier said.

That view was endorsed Thursday by Martin Trouillon, one of the three Hawthorne residents who brought suit against the city.

“We were not out to punish the city,” Trouillon said. “All we were out to do is let the city do what it wants in a legal manner. So the question is: ‘Can we benefit by settling in some way to allow the city a limited redevelopment plan that will not hurt residents?”’

In their legal challenge to Hawthorne’s redevelopment plan, attorneys for the residents had argued that the area slated for renovation was not blighted and that the city targeted the north end to force out minority residents.

“We alleged that what the city was engaged in was minority removal,” said Kevin Reed, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which helped represent the three residents in the lawsuit. “It’s always been our contention that what the city has always wanted was simply to . . . put community development on that land to displace the largely poor and largely Latino residents in order to increase its tax base.”

Although he ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, Davis nevertheless disputed the allegations of discrimination. He said he based his ruling in part on the city’s failure to prove that the area had a higher crime rate and lower property values than other parts of the city.

The city “did not act in bad faith or fraudulently,” Davis wrote. “(It) did not discriminate against any minority or low or moderate income person and did not violate any person’s Due Process, Equal Protection or other Civil Rights.”