Vons Opening in Compton Stirs Economic Hopes
There are already nearly 600 supermarkets in Los Angeles County, but the opening of a new Vons this morning in downtown Compton is being treated with the same degree of hoopla usually reserved for the first Wal-Mart in a lonely stretch of mid-America.
High school bands. Live radio broadcasts. A VIP buffet. To community and corporate officials, the Vons in the Compton Renaissance Plaza shopping center represents a milestone--the first new full-service supermarket to open in an area scarred by the 1992 riots.
“Supermarkets are significant because inner-city residents pay (up to) 15% to 20% more for food products than suburbanites,” said Bernard Kinsey, co-chair of RLA, the private agency created as the city’s main response to combat the effects of the riots. “By increasing competition, we’ll get better prices, quality and service. And that’s what is lacking in the inner city.”
Yet the level of excitement also serves to underscore the continuing need for more retail services and jobs in neighborhoods impacted by the riots. It also focuses a harsh spotlight on the degree of new job-creating investments by other industries in the riot-torn areas.
Rather than flee, as took place after the Watts riots of 1965, most major inner-city retailers agreed to rebuild. For companies such as Food 4 Less--the primary supermarket chain in South-Central Los Angeles, which saw two of its outlets burned down and 40 others looted--rebuilding was no minor decision.
The supermarket industry, however, has been the only major corporate player to pledge substantial chunks of capital for new inner-city business development since the riots.
Of about $280-million that RLA (formerly known as Rebuild L.A.) says has come in corporate pledges that would directly result in new jobs and businesses, $220-million is from Vons, Ralphs, Smart & Final and Food 4 Less.
The commitment by supermarkets in Los Angeles also reflects an emerging national trend of inner-city development that preceded the riots.
In Newark, N.J., community activists helped establish a supermarket in a neighborhood that lacked one for 20 years. New supermarkets have also begun opening in neglected neighborhoods of Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Miami, San Diego and Norfolk.
The Food Marketing Institute, a national trade group, launched its own urban community building initiative in March, 1992, and will soon meet with a task force of the National League of Cities to develop methods to make it easier for supermarkets to open in urban neighborhoods.
Supermarkets are considered a key component to rebuilding efforts in neighborhoods with chronic unemployment because they have a multiplier effect, providing additional jobs and services while serving as a magnet to attract additional small businesses.
“Markets are sort of the cement, the nuts and bolts needed for additional businesses to prosper,” said Food 4 Less Vice President Darius Anderson.
In Los Angeles, the market for new markets is particularly strong, according to a recent Consumers Union report.
“Compared to other cities, Los Angeles is a very expansive territory and--as a result--public transportation is not as efficient,” said Mariko Takayasu, a spokeswoman for Consumers Union. “That means residents of South-Central Los Angeles have to rely more on liquor stores.”
RLA Executive Board member Marilyn Solomon calls the supermarket investments “an appropriate initial step. . . . Clearly, the community (also) needs other kinds of facilities.”
Critics, meanwhile, say that RLA’s $220-million figure in new investment is exaggerated because Vons and others had already planned to open inner-city outlets before the riots and because the locations of new markets include North Hollywood, Pomona and Las Vegas.
“Five minutes after RLA opened its doors, the whole county said (the rebuilding efforts) can’t just be for South-Central Los Angeles or Pico-Union,” said Karen Bass, executive director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, which has led the fight to limit liquor stores in South-Central. “The minute it was diffused, pretty soon North Hollywood was declared the inner city.”
Vons spokeswoman Julie Reynolds said the 352-market chain--whose $100-million pledge to open up to 12 outlets has been touted by RLA as the largest single post-riot corporate investment in inner-city neighborhoods--decided in late 1991 to launch an urban development program.
“In the 1960s through 1980s, the growth in Southern California occurred primarily in suburban areas--it was more difficult to operate in urban areas and many retailers focused on the easier growth opportunity,” Reynolds said. “We took a look at the population density in the inner city and identified approximately 1.7 million to 2 million inner-city residents who . . . did not have access to a Vons.
“When the disturbances broke out several months later, executives at Vons made a rapid and prudent reassessment,” Reynolds said. “That resulted in an expansion and acceleration of the urban development program.”
Vons--the Southland’s largest supermarket chain, which for years had shut stores in South-Central Los Angeles--says it will also open a new supermarket in Inglewood this year and another at Slauson and Vermont avenues in South-Central in 1995.
As part of its $100-million urban development commitment, Vons also includes a new store that opened last month in Pomona and another opening later this year in North Las Vegas.
The outlet opening today in Compton was designed, developed and constructed by African American firms and its 103-employee staff will include several graduates of a government-funded post-riot job-training program.
“People give rhetoric to wanting to help inner cities--this is the way to do it,” said black activist Danny Bakewell, whose Compton Commercial Development Corp. was the project developer.
Directly across Compton Boulevard from a Boys market, the new Vons will offer much needed competition and a wider array of services, said shoppers outside the Boys. The new Vons complex will house a First Interstate Bank, a dry cleaning center, and service delis and bakeries, unlike the chain’s only other South-Central outlet, on El Segundo Boulevard.
In the case of Ralphs, the first of four new urban supermarkets pledged by the Compton-based chain opened last June on Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. Another is slated for the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue within a year.
The North Hollywood supermarket is considered to lie within an area in which RLA is seeking to spur investment, Kinsey acknowledged, because at least 20% of the neighborhood’s residents live below the federal poverty line.
“I didn’t define what the RLA area is,” said Ralphs Chairman Byron Allumbaugh. “It just so happened that our North Hollywood store fit into that area. We’ve been working on that location for 10 years and we finally got it done.”
Smart & Final, which operates discount outlets that sell food products in bulk, has opened four new stores since the riots--in South-Central Los Angeles, Huntington Park and West Hollywood. The 135-store chain has pledged $50 million to build 12 new outlets in neglected neighborhoods.
Many of these stores would “absolutely” have been opened with or without riots, said spokeswoman Leanne Reynolds. “(The unrest) accelerated our program because it clearly called into attention the demand and the need. And we also saw at the same time real estate values were going down and we were able to get more real estate.”
Reynolds said Smart & Final also intends to participate in developing two new shopping centers in Inglewood. Kinsey, who will soon step down from his RLA post, is expected to announce today that he is forming a private real estate investment trust to help develop at least one of the centers.
Food 4 Less, which owns the Boys, Viva and Alpha Beta chains, has pledged $10 million to keep Los Angeles high school athletic programs funded. It has also targeted $30-million in new supermarket investment, according to RLA. However, only one of four projects--at Imperial Highway and Western Avenue--is new.
One of the other projects described as a new investment is the planned construction of a market on a Community Redevelopment Agency-administered lot at Adams Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. That project has been on the drawing board for nearly a decade, drawing protests from community groups because the land has remained vacant for so long.
