Bringing It All Back Home : Rebuilding: The Crenshaw area is L.A.'s most affluent black community, yet it suffers from serious decay. Leaders say the solution is for residents to shop, bank, eat and work close to home.

By NINA J. EASTON

Oct. 26, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Just shy of the intersection of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King boulevards stands a monument to community activism, a concrete reminder of what the power of people can accomplish with a modicum of organization.

Its gleaming white facade rises out of the gray asphalt, a beacon of pride to the thousands of mostly African-American residents who pass through the riot-ravaged neighborhood each day.

But what they like best are its competitive prices on toilet paper and top sirloin. For this monument to civic activism doubles as a Lucky supermarket. “It’s my proudest achievement,” said Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who led a drive to bring the market to the Crenshaw district.

In an era of inner-city gangs, drugs and violence, this unbridled enthusiasm over a grocery store may sound about as relevant as offering Tylenol to a cancer patient, especially when you can buy your tomatoes at the Boys Market down the street. But some longtime residents of Crenshaw--the merchants and professionals who make it the most affluent black community in Los Angeles--are beginning to discern an important link between their consumer interests and the social ills that surround them.

Halting the decay in their community, they have come to understand, means persuading their neighbors to shop, bank, eat and work at home. “If it’s going to get done, we have to do it ourselves,” said Ellis Gordon, senior vice president of black-owned Founders National Bank.

Self-interest or community interest? Here, under the umbrella of a citizens’ post-riot effort called Rebuild Crenshaw, the two converge:

* Upscale residents protest the failure of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza--a 4-year-old, $120-million indoor mall--to cater to their tastes. What does the Broadway’s omission of all-cotton dress shirts (the kind that the dapper Gordon favors) from its stock of polyester blends have to do with social change? A lot, activists say, because it means that potential customers are spending their dollars at the Westside Pavilion and the Beverly Center instead of Crenshaw’s mall.

* Activists hope to persuade local governments to permit white-collar employees to “telecommute” from district offices in Crenshaw. At the same time, they want to persuade more black professionals to set up shop in the neighborhood. The social impact? “It seems to me that a lot of people who work at very respectable jobs could provide role models (for disadvantaged youth), but they’re not in the community during the day,” said Galanter, who organized Rebuild Crenshaw shortly after the spring violence.

* Residents plan to promote black ownership of local enterprises, help start-up firms and launch “Buy Crenshaw” marketing campaigns. “We need a thriving economic base,” said Joyce Perkins, a real estate agent who heads Rebuild Crenshaw’s homeowners committee. “Then we can give the kids the jobs.”

Over the next several months, Rebuild Crenshaw will develop a community master plan to guide development of the area, addressing everything from the kinds of stores that residents want to the kinds of youth services they need.

Although Crenshaw has a host of longstanding civic organizations, community planning on this scale is something new to the area. “People didn’t know how to get the street cleaned,” Perkins said.

Like other grass-roots groups that sprang up in South-Central Los Angeles after the riots, this one reflects skepticism that outsiders--notably Peter V. Ueberroth’s Rebuild L.A. organization--know what’s good for their community.

What’s good for Crenshaw, the local group’s proposals suggest, is the rebuilding of a middle-class infrastructure that began to crumble 20 years ago.

At a time when some scholars worry that black flight to the suburbs has worsened inner-city social conditions, these community leaders look just west of Crenshaw Boulevard to the thousands of middle-class and more affluent black families that not only have stayed, but are intent on protecting the value of their expensive homes.

They are keenly aware that enhancing the quality of life in Crenshaw means reviving the adjacent commercial district. They also know that it will not be easy.

Big retail outlets, such as the new Lucky, are taking root. But boarded-up mom-and-pop operations sit vacant along the boulevard’s sidewalks. Tractors are breaking ground on a new Smart & Final. But down the street, a block-long car dealership has been closed for more than a year.

The arrival of major retail outlets, from the mall to the new groceries, is evidence that “Crenshaw is in vogue now,” said Curtis Fralin, a Fred Sands commercial broker. Still, said Leo Ray-Lynch, general manager of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, “Crenshaw doesn’t have one-tenth the business it should for a major commercial strip with this level of traffic and population base.”

Mining the resources of an adjacent middle class is not a recipe for resuscitating other parts of the inner city. Crenshaw is one of those rare parts of Los Angeles where affluence--even if much of it is new--intimately coexists with poverty. The view this summer above Frank Holoman’s popular Boulevard Cafe summed up the two poles within the district: The billboard looming above a smart modern sign for “Black Achievers,” Holoman’s magazine for entrepreneurs, was an anti-drug message depicting a crack baby on a respirator.

While an influx of Latinos in other parts of South-Central Los Angeles has diluted the concentration of blacks, the Crenshaw district--with 107,000 residents--remains 76% African-American.

This large concentration of blacks, combined with a blossoming cultural scene, has made the area the hub of African-American life in Southern California.

At trendy Leimert Square, actress Marla Gibb’s Art Deco Crossroads theater complex--once a silent movie house, then a Jehovah’s Witness hall--towers above art galleries, dance space and a coffeehouse named Kaos. At Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw, street vendors hawk jewelry and richly hued African clothes. At Stocker Street and Crenshaw, a young Muslim man in a bow tie tirelessly sells his bean pies, along with the Word.

This thriving culture--and the affluence that embraces it--is what Gregory Love had in mind when his Rebuild Crenshaw business committee proposed promoting the district as a tourist stop. They also are among the reasons why the area became a valued prize this year in the City Council’s redistricting battle.

Once largely represented by Galanter, the heart of Crenshaw--including 23-acre Santa Barbara Plaza, the biggest concentration of black-owned businesses in the city--was carved apart. Last month, City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas outmaneuvered Councilman Nate Holden to gain the bulk of the area for his 8th District.

Bordered by Adams Boulevard on the north and 79th Street on the south, the Crenshaw district is home to some of the most riot-torn areas. Gas stations. Mini-malls. Supermarkets. Swap meets. All looted and leveled by flames.

If not for the fact that their stunning views were obscured by smoke and helicopters during the riots, the neighborhoods in the hills west of Crenshaw Boulevard could be mistaken for Palos Verdes, the exclusive suburb at the other end of the boulevard. Except for the occasional multimillion-dollar mansion, homes in Baldwin Hills and View Park range in price from $350,000 to $650,000--bargains, say local appraisers, who estimate that the same properties would command $200,000 more on the mostly white Westside.

“Crenshaw in a real way is undiscovered,” said Valerie Lynne Shaw, Galanter’s field deputy and a key player in Rebuild Crenshaw.

Shaw is one of the many young professionals who have carved out their own niche in the flats on both sides of Crenshaw Boulevard. These are neighborhoods such as Leimert Park, where on some streets lush pepper trees canopy red-tiled Spanish houses with ornate ironwork, or the historic Village Green, a 1930s design innovation that set apartment complexes--since converted to condos--around grassy knolls.

By contrast, the district’s poorest families live in places such as Hyde Park, where barred windows and battered chain-link fences make rows of tiny bungalows look like shelters under siege. Or they are packed into the stucco, two-story apartments of Baldwin Village, buildings crammed together and looking so relentlessly identical they suggest that the absentee developers ran out of imagination--and paint. Median family income in these neighborhoods: between $16,000 and $17,000.

Consumer activism in the Crenshaw district was beginning to emerge even before last spring’s violence turned broad swathes of the community into mounds of ashen debris. But Rebuild Crenshaw gives this middle-class consumer revolt a higher profile, linking it with the language of black self-empowerment.

Under the Rebuild Crenshaw banner, more than 400 residents meeting in homes, church halls and government offices over the past five months have taken a hard look at their neighborhood and decided they want a Nordstrom in the mall and friendlier service at local banks, better security for businesses and sharp curbs on liquor stores.

At the same time, they propose using local resources to help entrepreneurs get started and to increase black ownership of neighborhood businesses. A planned youth program includes “entrepreneurial training” as well as a more conventional job training plan. When Shaw preaches the message that “ownership anchors a community,” she is reflecting a growing consensus--especially among young leaders--that outsiders bringing in a few retail sales jobs will not reconnect disadvantaged youth to the community.

Implicit in most of this strategizing is a recognition that residents are not going to solve mass social problems. The 28-year-old Crenshaw Neighbors Inc. lobbied vigorously for Lucky, hoping that the store would give the dominant Boys chain a run for the money on price and service. Ted Lumpkin, the group’s president, said they stuck to the campaign “because it was something you could pursue, and have a concrete, tangible response. . . . At one time we had a youth delinquency program, but it kind of overwhelmed us.”

Is it equally pragmatic to hope to revitalize Crenshaw’s commercial core by asking residents to shop and work at home--and by asking developers to tailor their projects to community needs?

There is no shortage of skepticism within the community.

“There are some who argue that the power lies with the money and those who support the politicians financially have more power,” said a businessman who spoke to about 150 residents in August during the first meeting of Rebuild Crenshaw.

Likewise, selling residents on the importance of spending their paychecks at home is a new pitch--and often a difficult one, said Theodore Fortier, a Crenshaw dentist and community leader who gives talks on the issue. “Too many black folks still think the white man’s ice is colder than the black man’s ice,” he acidly observes.

Indeed, it is difficult to gauge whether efforts to persuade residents to “buy local” are working.

Sales are up at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza since the riots--due in part to the destruction of competitors--but 30% of the stores remain vacant. Although movie theaters are coming to the mall and a handful of major chains are negotiating leases, other stores refuse to move in.

Subtle redlining--by insurance companies as much as lenders--remains an obstacle to commercial growth, said another Rebuild Crenshaw leader, Leslie Bellamy, who heads a trade group for black real estate agents. He added that gang graffiti makes matters worse.

“Before we jump on the lenders, we need to jump on ourselves to control our community,” Bellamy told a group of Crenshaw residents.

Over the last decade, thousands of Los Angeles’ black families have packed up and fled to the suburbs. The middle-class homeowners who make up Crenshaw’s activist core have a different strategy in mind--at least for now. When an all-white jury failed to convict the police officers who beat black motorist Rodney G. King, these residents looked down the hill to their poorer neighbors and felt less divided by class than united by race.

With his designer suits and Van Dyke beard, banker Ellis Gordon does not look like he has much in common with the unemployed men in T-shirts on the streets of Baldwin Village. But the King verdict convinced him he did.

“The indigent knew the system didn’t work for them,” Gordon said. “The middle class . . . now that’s where the anger really was. These people had bought into the system. They still thought the American dream could be bought.”

Joyce Perkins has smelled the fetid breath of racism. As a student fresh out of San Francisco State’s social work school in the 1970s, she was denied a Fairfax district apartment because of her color.

Since then, she and her family have built a comfortable life in Crenshaw. But the King verdict and the riots brought the memories of discrimination racing back.

Perkins watched as businesses burned, and she sighed with relief when the drugstore that employed her 18-year-old son was spared. She remembers how long it took him to land that job.

“He went a whole summer without finding any work,” she said. “It’s very difficult for young people to find jobs.”

Then, looking out the living room window of her home of 15 years--a Baldwin Vista ranch-style set atop a bank of ivy--she added quietly: “Don’t separate us from South-Central. We may have different incomes, but we have some of the same problems.”

The Heart of Black L.A.

The Crenshaw District, one of the nation’s most affluent black enclaves, is the economic and cultural center of black life in Los Angeles. Yet even within Crenshaw, there are areas of endemic poverty. In the wake of the riots, community activists have mobilized to preserve--and enhance--the area’s economic vitality.

A Profile of Crenshaw Though it is home to many of Los Angeles’ wealthiest blacks, the poverty in portions of the Crenshaw district ranks it below the city average for several measures of affluence. CRENSHAW DISTRICT Population: 107,000

% Anglo: 3

% Black: 76

% Asian/Pacific Islander: 4

% Latino: 15

Education, people 18 and over

% High school graduates or less: 50

% College graduates or more: 16

% Unemployed: 9.9

Median household income: $25,843

% Living in poverty: 18.3

% Owner-occupied housing: 45

Median home value: $157,954