A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Community Essay : Rebuild L.A. is focusing too much on the big corporations. What will work is to take street hawkers and help them become small business owners.

I’m a businessman with more than 20 years of experience in and around South Los Angeles. It follows that I have more than an intellectual interest in the post-riot rebuilding process. Frankly, what I am seeing and hearing distresses me more than it comforts.

With all due respect to Peter Ueberroth, the Rebuild L.A. campaign puts too much emphasis on high-profile, flashy corporate fixes--an excessive emphasis on highly visible business structures and too little attention to what those structures will be built upon. The approach is akin to building a skyscraper on swampland.

What South Los Angeles desperately needs is a strong business infrastructure. That’s what will provide jobs and economic security for the people who live in the riot-torn areas, and that’s where Ueberroth and his organization should be focusing their attention.

Since we’ve all grown fond of equating the 1984 summer Olympics with a successful Rebuild L.A. campaign, let’s compare the two more closely.

The 1984 Games were a huge success. They were also a one-shot affair. For a few short months, the world focused its attention on Los Angeles. People pulled together. The city worked.

Then the Games ended and everyone went home. As the television cameras powered down and the media dispersed, things reverted to pretty much the same as they were before the Olympic torch was lit. Life remained fairly rotten for the poor and disenfranchised.

The Olympics story is similar to what took place in the aftermath of the Watts riots. After that round of rioting, and just as it did in 1984, the world focused its attention on Los Angeles. Things got done.

But most of the corporations that opened shop during the late 1960s as part of the Watts rebuilding effort proved fair-weather friends. One by one they quietly left town, complaining of economic downturns, market changes, lack of a good reason to stay. It was the people of South L.A. who paid the price as jobs and prospects for a better future exited with the corporations.

So the question is: How can we best keep the flames from returning this time?

More than anything else, what needs to be nurtured in South Los Angeles are small, locally owned, service-oriented businesses. If people have a stake in their community, they will protect not only what is theirs but also what belongs to their neighbors. This isn’t a new concept, but that does not make it less profound.

Small businesses are where the most jobs are created, as any government statistician will confirm. They are also the best kind of training ground for capitalism. And let’s face it, learning how to earn a profit remains one of the best defenses in a cruel and indifferent society.

I learned this lesson myself in the bad old days of the Korean War. When I was 10 years old, I became a North Korean refugee living hand to mouth in the South. For three long years, I engaged in the difficult and challenging business of shining shoes at a nickel a throw. In the beginning, I was terrified of the American GIs. For a 10-year-old boy, those tall American soldiers with their broad shoulders and big noses were more than a little intimidating. Worse for me, they all seemed to have huge feet, which meant big boots, which meant more polish and more elbow grease.

On the other hand, GIs also meant being paid in American currency, which traded at a premium. They also represented the chance of being paid 10 cents instead of 5 cents, or of receiving candy that could be resold. So I survived and I learned and eventually I thrived.

As for the hard-working refugees of today, you see them everywhere in South Los Angeles. They are hawking flowers on the freeway off-ramps, scraping through waste barrels for aluminum cans, washing car windows for tips and working at every odd job they can find. The entrepreneurial spirit lives in South Los Angeles. But it needs nurturing.

My rebuild Los Angeles program is simple: Put the street entrepreneurs into their own shops. Give them a bigger stake in their community. Inspire others to take their own stake. It’s really that simple.

Security is a problem, but it is not insoluble. Witness the merchant enclaves of the Koreatowns, Chinatowns and other ethnic business districts that thrive in American inner cities. I remember how Los Angeles’ Koreatown took root in a neighborhood that many had written off as dead. The merchants and the people they served were what made the difference.

South Los Angeles has enough of a sense of community to protect its own merchant areas. But again, the business district concept needs implementation, and the merchants will need nurturing.

The start-up costs for my rebuild program are not excessive. They can take the form of tax incentives, loan subsidies, guarantees of affordable insurance, commitments for adequate police protection. What’s more, from a geographic standpoint, South Los Angeles is perfectly positioned for economic prosperity. It’s close to major transportation, industrial areas, the downtown financial district and even the ritzy Westside scene. All it lacks is simple, unsexy, but oh-so-important grass-roots business infrastructure.