The Bottleneck : Squeezed by Tough Restrictions, Only a Few of the Hundreds of Liquor Stores Damaged During the Riots Have Reopened.

Bucket of Blood, they used to call it. And for years, Bloom’s Liquor Store, at 39th and Normandie, lived up to the nickname.

It was a place, police and neighbors say, where beatings and stabbings and shootings were commonplace. Where cheap wine, malt liquor and drugs flowed freely in the parking lot, often turning it into a marketplace of mayhem.

“Bloom’s was a terrible liquor store,” said Sgt. Bob Fox of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southwest Division vice squad. “There were a lot of shootings outside and near that store . . . a terrible narcotics problem. That liquor store was probably the major headache” for the division, he said.

So when last year’s riots leveled Bloom’s, there weren’t buckets of tears shed by authorities or neighbors.

“It was really very tragic the place got burned down,” said Sylvia Castillo of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, a federally funded agency that wants to see fewer liquor stores in South-Central. “And yet even in that tragedy, people have had so much relief” because the store is gone.

It has been more than a year since about 300 liquor stores were destroyed in the riots, and only a few have been rebuilt. In South-Central, which once had more than 700 liquor outlets, only 10 of the 200 stores destroyed in the riots have reopened, according to the Community Coalition. Similarly, officials say, only a few of the 100 or so other stores in Koreatown, Hollywood and other riot-scarred areas have returned.

“The bottom line is that since the riots, not a whole lot of (stores) have come back,” said Jerry Jolly, deputy division chief of the state Alcoholic Beverage and Control Board.

Significantly, the stores that have rebuilt--or plan to--also are subject to new land use restrictions imposed for years in other parts of the city--parts that were newer, parts where neighborhoods and politicians long ago mobilized to protest problem liquor stores.

Although the South-Central Organizing Committee began to champion tighter restrictions on local liquor stores a decade ago, it took some time for their clout to build. And even then, authorities say, there was little that could be done to control many problem liquor stores because they had been operating for decades with few or no government restrictions.

Before the riots, prodding by community groups led city officials to focus new attention on troubling inner-city stores. After the riots, when those stores came to the city to rebuild, the opportunity was presented to finally impose tougher regulations.

The requirements include shorter hours, private security guards, a ban on the sale of individual cups or glasses, and a prohibition on flashing signs that advertise liquor to passersby. And the restrictions, championed for years by groups like the South-Central Organizing Committee, have clearly dulled the interest among some inner-city store owners about reopening.

Some see that as reason to cheer.

Said Castillo: “If there is one issue that has galvanized South-Central since the civil unrest, it is that people don’t want liquor stores back in their neighborhoods.”

However, others complain that liquor stores are being made scapegoats for problems that are far more complicated than who sells alcohol.

“It’s almost like a witch hunt,” said Ryan Song of the Korean-American Grocers Assn.

So onerous are the restrictions on stores that sell liquor, say Song and others, that since the riots, only a third of the 180 Korean-American-owned outlets destroyed have even applied to rebuild. And so far, just six have cleared all the legal and financial hurdles involved in reopening to the city’s specifications, according to Song and Min Paek, executive director of the Korean-American Grocers Victims Assn., which represents almost 200 stores.

“Only 60 of 180 have applied to reopen,” Paek said. “The rest were flabbergasted that they had to go through so much.”

Flustered but hoping to reopen is Bloom’s owner, Charles Chong Paek (no relation to Min).

For almost two years before the riots, Charles Paek said, he and his family made a good living at Bloom’s. He, his wife and son worked long hours every day, Paek said, keeping the store open from 7 a.m. to midnight. And for their hard work, he said, they cleared about $50,000 to $60,000 a year as a family.

But that income, he said, would be more than wiped out if the city successfully imposes new restrictions on Bloom’s, such as reducing operating hours to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and requiring two licensed security guards to patrol the store and parking lot during business hours.

The guards alone could cost $8,000 a month, he said.

“I can’t do business” with the proposed conditions, Paek said through an interpreter. “If it’s final, I’m looking someplace else” for a store.

Paek said he has always been a responsible business owner who did what he could to keep his lot free of trouble. He said he only called police a few times, and only then for shoplifters. “No different from other stores,” he said.

But community activists and police tell a different story. During a City Hall hearing on Paek’s request to rebuild, Fox said Police Department statistics show crime fell in the area around Bloom’s after the store was leveled; there were 76 calls for services in the second half of 1991, compared with 62 in the second half of 1992.

“In other words,” Fox told a city hearing examiner, “since the destruction of the store, there has been nearly a 20% reduction in arrests and calls for service at the (location).”

Paek dismisses the criticisms of his store as “a joke.”

Although no comprehensive statistics are available on how the loss of liquor stores has affected crime, interviews with authorities and activists make it clear they believe many neighborhoods are safer with fewer problem liquor outlets.

Then again, the loss of the outlets has not come without some price to neighborhoods, whose residents depend on such stores for groceries. Or to merchants, who feel their livelihood has been stripped away by forces beyond their control.

An attorney representing many angry liquor store owners, for example, said the city is targeting stores for closure in a willy-nilly fashion that is unjustified and illegal.

By setting a number of new requirements for reopening stores that already hold liquor licenses, attorney Stephen L. Jones said, the city has trampled on the property rights of store owners. In a series of lawsuits, Jones has challenged the city’s post-riot regulations, which include environmental impact reports forecasting a store’s implications for the neighborhood.

“The city believes it is attempting to reach a beneficial conclusion” by imposing new regulations on businesses with liquor licenses, Jones said. “I’m not challenging whether what the city wants to do is good or bad. I’m just saying the end does not justify the means.”

Added Min Paek of the grocers victims association: “I can see why they are putting in restrictions, but it is unfair from the business side. . . . It is not the liquor store owner who should take the whole responsibility. If no one buys liquor, how can liquor stores exist?”

The emotion of the debate is evident in Paek’s tone and her words.

“I look at these Korean victims and they are no better off than the people who they used to sell alcohol to. They are trapped, too,” she said. “And who is interested in solving their problems?”

With fewer than a dozen stores operating under the new regulations, officials hesitate to say the requirements have been a success or failure. “I think it’s too early to tell,” said Fox of the Police Department. “But I can say some of the stores have considerably cleaned up their areas.”

Meanwhile, city officials and longtime critics of some liquor outlets say store owners might not be in such a jam if they had run their stores responsibly before they were destroyed in the riots. A good track record, they say, would have gone a long way in persuading some communities that a store should reopen.

“We have identified some of the major problem sites and gone after them,” said Jon Perica, a city zoning administrator. “The message that has gone out to the community is: If you sell alcohol irresponsibly, we’re coming after you.”

Another store that has run into opposition in the community is Finley’s Liquor at 5022 S. Western Ave. Jerome Buckmelter, a representative of Finley’s owner, argued at a Board of Zoning Appeals hearing recently that the store should be permitted to reopen without any of the new restrictions. Buckmelter said Finley’s owner made every effort to properly run the business.

But opponents, citing personal stories and police statistics, alleged that before it was leveled in the riots, Finley’s was a magnet for rampant drug dealing, robberies and assaults. And over the years, they said, the violence at Finley’s committed by parking lot regulars had hurt too many lives. In one case, they said, an area resident was blinded by an attacker after passing the store. And in 1986, a 17-year-old was shot to death behind the store--a reported case of mistaken identity by someone trying to even a score after a purse-snatching.

“What is clear is that this store has been out of control for a very long time,” Castillo, of the community coalition, told the city panel. Father Fernando Arizti of nearby St. Brigid Catholic Church agreed.

“Not that I am against liquor. I drink wine every day when I say Mass,” he quipped. “But the fact of the matter is that we live there and we know what’s going on . . . and I don’t want these people (neighbors) to be suffering the consequences of the nuisance of a liquor store.”

As many residents and community activists insist, they do not have a blanket objection to stores selling liquor. After all, the dearth of supermarkets in Central Los Angeles means that corner groceries, convenience stores and liquor outlets satisfy a demand for goods.

But some stores, they say, did not just ignore crime. They contributed to it by setting up couches in parking lots so customers could sit and drink and by selling items for drug use--single Brillo pads, for example, that are used as heating elements for crack.

By contrast, South-Central’s Astro Mini Market is the sort of store that area residents and activists say has always enjoyed support because its owners are responsible. The business, on Manchester Boulevard at Main Street, is a “shining” model of a store the community wants to keep and support, Castillo said.

The secret? “You have to take responsibility” for the business, said D. J. McCulley, who owns the store with Troy and Diane Jones.

If there is trouble in the parking lot, the partners say, it is in their interest to stop it. “It’s going out there and saying, ‘Take it elsewhere,’ ” McCulley said. “It’s not disrespecting anybody; it’s having respect for the business.”

To those who say such confrontations are too dangerous, McCulley responded: “If you are afraid, you shouldn’t be in this business . . . because if you don’t nip a problem in the bud immediately, it festers.”

As Diane Jones put it: “You’ve got to start out the business the way you want it to end up.”

Still, the debate continues both over the responsibility of store owners and how Central Los Angeles neighborhoods could be hurt if many stores destroyed during the riots never reopen.

“The public thinks that a liquor store only sells liquor. That is not the case--only about 15 to 20% of the floor space (of stores) has been dedicated to liquor sales. Everything else is grocery items,” said Song of the Korean-American Grocers Assn.

“Whether there are too many stores or not is, I think, subjective,” he said.

Even critics of the number of liquor stores in Central Los Angeles acknowledge that losing them will not suddenly make inner-city streets safe again.

“In one sense, I believe that, yes, the number of stores is a liability and contributes to the problems,” said Allison Tom of the East-West Community Partnership, the community coalition’s counterpart in Silver Lake, Koreatown and other communities. “But I do not think ridding (communities) of liquor stores will solve all the problems.”

Still, Tom said, the debate over liquor stores is an important one and has been given new momentum by the riots. “This issue has gone on for 20 years, if not longer, but it has reached a turning point in terms of attention,” she said.

Added Castillo: “Since the riots, there is an increased optimism that you can make a difference, that you can participate in improving the neighborhood. . . . That doesn’t mean that crime has been wiped out of South-Central or that if you get rid of all liquor stores, there will be no crime. But it does mean that if you use land in a way that doesn’t attract this criminal element . . . that neighborhoods will change.”