Officials Try to Keep Apparel Firms From Bolting Downtown : Commerce: Mayor cites cleanup efforts and a law enforcement crackdown in trying to dissuade tenants of the California Mart from moving out.

With several hundred tenants of the city’s largest wholesale apparel building threatening to move out of downtown, anxious Los Angeles officials attempted Friday to assuage concerns about safety, high rents and a declining economic base in the downtown garment district.

Flanked by five police officers on newly purchased bicycles, Mayor Tom Bradley touted a cleanup and law enforcement crackdown that he predicted would revitalize the deteriorating area and help financially troubled apparel businesses rebound.

“It is in action, and it is working,” Bradley said at a news conference outside the California Mart. For 27 years the mart on 9th Street has served as wholesale central for Southern California’s garment industry, but it has been increasingly besieged by homeless people and vagrants.

The new public-private effort includes a nine-officer police bicycle patrol covering a 30-block area east of Broadway between Pico Boulevard and 7th Street, increased sidewalk and street cleaning in the area, and landlord concessions to reduce rents and parking fees at the mart by at least 20%.

“We believe that through these efforts we are going to restore the vitality into this great apparel industry here in Los Angeles,” Bradley said. “We are determined to protect it and preserve it.”

The police officers already were assigned to the area in patrol cars and on foot, but businesses bought the bicycles and uniforms to increase their mobility and visibility, police said. Officers have been arresting “aggressive panhandlers” and drug peddlers, and have been confiscating shopping carts that they suspect are used to transport and sell stolen goods, Capt. Jim Tatreau said.

Crime in the Central City, which includes the garment district, has dropped nearly 12% since the bicycle patrols and other stepped-up law enforcement efforts began during the summer, Tatreau said.

“The message should be that downtown is a wonderful place to shop,” he said. “We want people to come downtown. These officers will be there.”

All the programs announced by Bradley have been in effect for several months, but the timing of the mayor’s public show of concern appeared to be linked to an upcoming meeting of disgruntled tenants at the California Mart.

About 400 of the building’s 1,400 tenants organized the 110 E. 9th Street Tenants Assn. in July to begin searching for a new home. The group is to meet Monday with developers about constructing a mart away from downtown, perhaps in Santa Monica. Tenants have said they are unhappy about rent increases, deteriorating conditions in the neighborhood and a landlord they say is unsympathetic to their recessionary woes.

Tenants are expected to vote Nov. 30 whether to leave the downtown facility.

City and downtown business leaders, reeling from a depressed economy, were shocked at the prospect of losing the multibillion-dollar mart. The building handles more than $6 billion in merchandise annually, according to city officials, and it serves as the anchor for the 2,300-acre downtown garment district, which is one of the city’s largest employers.

“We used this as a way to get the mayor’s attention and the city’s attention,” said Carol E. Schatz, vice president of the Central City Assn., which has contributed $8,000 toward hiring homeless workers and others to assist in the cleanup. “People aren’t going to come down here and shop if they don’t feel secure.”

Fred Bostal, a tenants association member who has rented a showroom at the mart for 22 years, said he is doubtful that the rent reductions and beefed up security patrols will be enough to persuade some tenants to remain downtown. He praised landlord Sidney Morse for addressing tenant concerns, but said the spring riots and downtown’s general lack of appeal to out-of-town buyers make a suburban location more desirable.

“People who are interested in the move are probably thinking it is a brand-new structure and it is extremely well located for many people living on the Westside,” Bostal said. “It is away from the downtown, which we both know is not the Mecca in terms of Los Angeles.”

Morse said he is hopeful that the programs announced by Bradley, combined with the mart’s location at the heart of the garment district, will continue to make it the most logical location for apparel showrooms. But, he added: “The jury is still out.”