Agency OKs but Delays Study of Latino Marketplace Idea : Marketplace: Redevelopment Agency authorizes research, then delays it when Latino business group says it already has a plan.
It is Saturday morning, and a craving for hot tortillas and scrambled eggs with chorizo sets in. After breakfast you would like to wander around, do some shopping, listen to mariachis, maybe watch a Spanish-language movie. Where do you go?
Ask many residents of this city where a fourth of the population is Latino and the answers come quick: Huntington Park. East Los Angeles. Grand Central Market in downtown L.A. Just about any place except Long Beach.
On Monday, the city’s Redevelopment Agency board took a step which may change that by authorizing a study to find out whether a mercado (Latino marketplace) would flourish here.
The $75,000 study, to be conducted by the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate Development, will look at what kind of mercado would be best suited for Long Beach, whether there is enough demand for such a center, who it will serve and where it should be located.
USC experts plan to use three successful mercados as case studies: Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, where vendors sell food and other goods; Pacific Avenue in Huntington Park, a business district with stores specializing in everything from electronic goods and clothing to baked goods and income tax preparation, and Tlaquepaque in Sedona, Ariz., an upscale mall that caters mostly to tourists looking for arts and crafts.
Although the board approved the Lusk Center proposal, it was unclear when the study--expected to last six months--will begin. Agency Chairman Donald Westerland said Tuesday that he asked the city attorney to delay the contracts authorizing the study after he received complaints from members of the Latino Entrepreneurial Assn., who said they had been unfairly excluded from the discussion.
The association has been developing a mercado proposal for much of the last three years.
Westerland said he was unaware that the association had been working on a plan and said the agency should review it.
Entrepreneurial association President Aurelio Agundez said the 100-member organization has visited mercados, completed comparison studies, selected a site and lined up investors. Agundez said that since the group has already done so much work, the Lusk study could be a waste of time. There is no question, Agundez said, that there is a demand for a mercado in the city.
“The Latino community in Long Beach now is a quarter of the city, yet there is nothing really that addresses the economic ethnic needs of the community,” Agundez said. “Look at Huntington Park. We can see what they have done with fewer resources. It puts the leadership of this city to shame.”
Former Planning Commission member and Long Beach architect Manuel Perez, who suggested that the Lusk Center conduct the study, said the Lusk Center proposal is not duplicating the entrepreneurial group’s work.
“They have a specific development proposal and we are trying to do a generic study,” Perez said. “Right now, the city doesn’t know what a mercado is and has no way of finding out the depth and breadth of the need. Are we talking about strictly a frijoles and tortillas center or more upscale from that or very top scale? The study will answer that.”
Perez said he will meet with association members to discuss the two proposals so that the Lusk Center study can begin. In the end, he said, he and the Latino entrepreneurs agree on one thing: They want to see a mercado built in the city.
