Hopes and Fears : Grass-Roots Groups Rise Up to Help Long Beach Rebuild

For many Long Beach residents, the riots that tore through Los Angeles last spring were merely a sideshow, something they watched on television. The real riots could be seen and heard from their front steps.

Six months later, residents of the county’s second-largest city are confronting life after those Long Beach riots with a mixture of determination, hope and, in many cases, a nagging sense of fear.

The amount of damage when compared to that in Los Angeles may seem low, but its effect on Long Beach has been dramatic.

Rubble from the more than two dozen buildings destroyed or severely damaged--mostly in the central and northern parts of the city--has been cleared away. Rebuilding has begun on about a third of them. More than $6 million in government loans and grants has been distributed to help many of the 387 businesses affected.

Across the city, grass-roots groups born in the wake of the riots have been organizing community cleanups and other improvement projects. Police officials say they have fine-tuned their riot response plan, based on lessons learned from the riots, and add that they are well prepared for any similar trouble.

Even so, scars remain.

There was an estimated $18 million in damage to buildings alone, not including loss of contents. An estimated 150 businesses have closed. More than 100 businesses did not even request loans or other assistance to help them reopen.

The legal system is also still wrestling with vestiges of the riots. Although all but a handful of the city’s 300 riot-related felony cases and 400 misdemeanor cases have been disposed of, trials are pending for three men accused of murdering a motorcyclist on a Long Beach street on the second--and most violent--day of the riots.

And among some residents, there is a vague, uneasy feeling about the future, a feeling that it might happen again.

Courtney Minors, owner of the Culture Beat record store on East 7th Street, compares living in post-riot Long Beach to living next to a nuclear power plant.

“If you live 10 miles from a nuclear power plant, you can’t go around all day worrying that it’s going to blow up,” said the 32-year-old ex-Marine, who armed himself to defend his store against looters during the riots. “But it’s always there in the back of my head.”

Sidney Anderson, 67, who owned a commercial building that is now an empty slab of concrete on East Anaheim Street, is worried about upcoming trials--the federal trial of the four officers involved in the Rodney G. King beating case, and the trials of three men accused of beating truck driver Reginald O. Denny. The response to those trials--by citizens and authorities--may determine whether he ever rebuilds in Long Beach, he said.

“If I rebuild, are they going to burn down my building again?” Anderson wonders.

For Hilda Kelly, 37, who owns Kelly’s Place, a small antique and collectibles store near Cherry Avenue and 4th Street, the months since the riots have been a roller-coaster ride of fear and hope. Her store was looted of 90% of its merchandise.

Kelly sees fear in the new wrought-iron burglar bars that cover her front windows and in the double-locked gate that guards her front door. Several neighboring businesses also have installed burglar bars since the riots, she said.

“It’s a bad feeling to come in (to the store) through gates,” Kelly said.

At the same time, Kelly sees hope in the support she has received from her neighbors in the area, where there is a strip of small businesses. And she has finally gotten caught up on her rent and utility bills. Her application for a Small Business Administration loan is pending.

“I’m trying not to focus on the negative things,” Kelly said. “I try to keep things on a positive note, in spite of all the struggles.”

But despite the destruction and pain the riots caused, some people in Long Beach see them as a catalyst for good.

Perhaps most important, some residents and city officials say, new grass-roots groups helped clean up the destruction and confront many of the problems that contributed to the violence.

“There’ve been some tremendous changes in Long Beach” since the riots, said Kim Hudson, a 32-year-old loan officer who is director of Vision for Long Beach, a community volunteer group created during the riots. “People saw their lives going down the tubes and decided they’d better do something. Now people in neighborhoods are getting organized like they never did before.”

Susan Shick, director of community development for the city, agreed: “We have a great volunteer effort that has helped people work through the problems and hostilities caused by the riots.”

Hudson said his Vision for Long Beach concentrated on post-riot cleanup, with hundreds of volunteers wielding brooms. Since then, the group has branched out into various neighborhood efforts, such as helping residents organize community watch programs and fight drug dealing by threatening legal action against landlords who refuse to evict dealers. Recently, Hudson said, Vision for Long Beach sponsored neighborhood cleanup activities at 20 sites.

Hudson and others noted that more than a dozen neighborhood associations have sprung up since the riots. A new youth athletic and activities center, sponsored by the Long Beach Police Department and other volunteers and built largely with donated materials and services, will soon open on West 9th Street. And a day-care program has been created to allow mothers to look for work.

“It just goes to show that we don’t need millions of dollars to make a difference,” said Hudson, whose group has operated for six months on $15,000 in funding, two-thirds of it from a grant by Southern California Edison and the rest from smaller grants and contributions.

The difference Vision for Long Beach and other groups have made sometimes has been as much emotional as physical.

Vision for Long Beach “gave me more support than anybody else,” said Seyhan Vurgun, 55, whose jewelry repair shop on 7th Street was looted and extensively damaged in the riots. She said the group had helped her with the often-confusing process of applying for loans and supplied moral support.

“They gave me hope that I could stay in business,” Vurgun said. “That was what I needed more than anything else.”

Michael Parker, manager of the Neighborhood Services Bureau of the city’s Community Development Department, said “there have been many groups, representing many, many people who have come together with the common goal of responding to the damage. That’s one of the positive things to come out of this. People are seeing the need to work collectively to deal with the problems facing their neighborhoods.”

One group of Long Beach residents particularly hard hit wasCambodian-Americans, whose population in the city ranges from an estimated 45,000 to about half that in official census reports. Community leaders have said that 35 Cambodian-owned businesses were either destroyed or seriously damaged.

Some community leaders say there is a sense of determination to rebuild.

“We’re staying in Long Beach,” said Sandra Arun Blankenship, executive director of the Long Beach-based Cambodian Business Assn. “I think everyone here just wants to get back to normal.”

“Of course I will start over,” Samath Yem, 41, whose combination gift shop and travel agency on East Anaheim Street was destroyed by fire, said shortly after the riots. Now Yem has started over, although in somewhat reduced circumstances. He has reopened the travel agency in a mini-mall a few blocks away from the old site.

As for plans in the event of future riots, Long Beach police officials say they are better prepared.

“We were pretty pleased with how we reacted to the riots, especially compared to L.A.,” said Sgt. Ty Hatfield, a spokesman for the Long Beach Police Department. He added that the department has incorporated lessons learned during the riots into its longstanding emergency contingency plans, but he declined to discuss the plans in detail.

Asked if the Police Department believes that another riot could happen, Hatfield responded: “That’s hard to say. Maybe people got it out of their system, maybe not. But you have to prepare for the worst.”