City Hall Branch to Be Built in South-Central

South-Central Los Angeles officials and community leaders broke ground Monday on Vermont Avenue for a new mini-city hall, to replace one that was destroyed in the riots just two weeks before it was to open in a refurbished bank building.

The new structure will give South-Central residents easier access to city services and provide a headquarters to coordinate reconstruction of the riot-damaged neighborhood, said 8th District Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas.

The 17,000-square-foot Constituent Service Center--slated to open April 29 on the first anniversary of the riots--will include a community meeting room, the 8th District council member’s office, and representatives of 15 city departments, including planning, public works, cultural affairs and aging.

The planners are negotiating with Police Chief Willie Williams over the possibility of providing space in the building for LAPD officers, Ridley-Thomas said.

Ridley-Thomas led the groundbreaking at Vermont Avenue and 85th Street, where only two massive, graffiti-marred concrete bank vaults remain from the arson fire that destroyed the original 1930s-era building. They will be demolished next month, when construction is set to begin.

The $1.2-million construction cost will be paid by a civic group, Los Angeles 100 Black Men. The organization had paid for renovation of the old bank building and will use insurance proceeds from the arson fire to bankroll the new construction.

The Constituent Service Center is being rebuilt so that “citizens of this part of the city can join with us in making the 8th District and South Los Angeles what it should be,” Ridley-Thomas said. “So we can show all of the city of Los Angeles and everybody else that we will not be defeated, that we are down but not out.”

Warren Valdry, one of the entrepreneurs, doctors and community leaders known as Los Angeles 100 Black Men, said his group hopes the new building will help South-Central’s resources mesh with city efforts to rebuild.

“To paraphrase (President John F.) Kennedy, this is not what the city can do for us, but what we can do for the city,” Valdry said in an interview.

He then told the crowd, “We’ll make sure this is not only a rebuilding, but building a new Los Angeles.”

The two-story glass-and-brick building will be constructed by local contracting firms, many of them owned and run by members of Los Angeles 100 Black Men.

The city will use $220,000 in riot aid from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to outfit the offices with telephones, computers, desks and other equipment, said Carolyn Webb-de Macias, 8th District chief of staff.