Smart & Final Plans Major Store Expansion : Retail: The grocery warehouse chain intends to open 12 new outlets, including two shopping centers in the inner city.

Smart & Final Inc., the grocery warehouse chain, will open six new stores in riot-torn areas of Los Angeles as part of a $50-million expansion plan that also includes development of two new shopping centers in the inner city.

The Vernon-based chain, which now operates 120 stores selling bulk foods and other items at discount prices, will break ground Wednesday for a new supermarket along a riot-beaten section of Crenshaw Boulevard.

The $1.1-million store will be one of 12 outlets included in the three-year plan, along with the shopping centers, an expansion of the company’s headquarters, and a $50,000 scholarship program for East and South-Central Los Angeles residents who plan to attend junior college.

The plan was unveiled less than one month after the Vons Cos. said it would invest $100 million in grocery stores in Los Angeles.

Smart & Final has estimated that its new stores will provide 400 jobs for local residents.

“This is a major commitment on our part in terms of money,” Smart & Final Chief Executive Robert Emmons said in an interview. But Emmons, whose company now operates 15 successful warehouse stores in or near the Los Angeles inner city, added: “We’ve always found the inner city to be a good market.”

Of the $50-million Smart & Final plans to invest in new and expanded sites, a portion will fund the two new shopping centers, both in Inglewood.

Launching those two centers will cost an estimated $27 million, to be partly funded by Smart & Final in a joint venture.

Community leaders, who have bemoaned the flight of grocery stores from the southern Los Angeles area over the last 30 years, generally welcomed the added competition, which they said would drive down the inflated prices residents have had to pay.

“Before we didn’t have this concentration of markets desiring to come into the neighborhood,” said City Councilman Nate Holden, whose district will include the Crenshaw store. “I’m excited. They’re bringing in goods at an affordable price for people in the area.”

Holden said he is now negotiating with a number of different supermarkets and warehouse stores--including Smart & Final, Vons, Lucky Stores, the Boys and Food 4 Less--all of which hope to open new stores in the district.

“I’m talking to everybody,” Holden said. “But we want to make sure that they’re strategically located so each community has access to a store.”

Since the 1965 Watts riots, many supermarkets closed stores in South and East Los Angeles, leaving residents with what they decried as fewer choices, inflated prices and inadequate services.

Only 74 supermarkets served an area including Inglewood, South Los Angeles and sections of Gardena, Hawthorne, Huntington Park and Compton, according to a recent Times survey. That’s about 10% of the 755 supermarkets in Los Angeles County.

Based on 1991 population estimates, an average of 15,198 people in that area rely on each supermarket--compared to an average of 11,929 people per supermarket countywide.

While recent building plans should help alleviate the shortage of markets, the type of stores opening up in the area concerns some community residents. They fear that discount chains are replacing the full-service grocery stores generally found in other communities.

Those stores provide customers amenities such as bagging groceries and check cashing.

Some Watts residents, for example, have lobbied against replacing a former Boys Market at 103rd Street and Compton Avenue with a discount Food 4 Less store. Those residents worry that the growth of discount, warehouse-type stores in southern Los Angeles will stunt the growth of full-service chains such as Boys, Vons and Lucky.

The Lucky supermarket chain opened a $4.2-million store on Crenshaw Boulevard in Baldwin Hills in April.

Because the store has done so well--ranking among the top 20% of all Lucky Stores in Los Angeles in sales--the company is now negotiating to open stores at several other sites in the Los Angeles inner city, said Judith Decker, company spokeswoman.

According to Craig Sasser, executive director of the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce, Lucky’s success on Crenshaw Boulevard was the catalyst prompting other markets to re-enter the area.

“Forget about this stuff about helping the community,” Sasser said. “Everybody knows that Lucky is making a lot of money.”

Sasser said that local residents had even complained about the traffic generated by Lucky’s success.

“There were 18-wheelers constantly delivering groceries,” Sasser said. “The idea that businesses don’t work in the inner city because people steal and all that went right out the window.”

Still, Sasser welcomed the planned expansion of Smart & Final and other discount chains in the neighborhood.

“They offer something that we haven’t had in the area--that’s a good thing,” he said.

“That’s what we need in this community: normal competition.”