Bristol Street Expansion Fight Renewed at Court Hearing : Redevelopment: Residents who would be displaced charge that Santa Ana has not found them new housing.

Opponents of Santa Ana’s controversial Bristol Corridor Redevelopment Project faced off with city officials in Superior Court on Friday, arguing that the city has not complied with a state appellate court ruling that it find new housing for hundreds of families.

Attorneys for a businessman and single mother in the proposed 783-acre project area who filed suit in 1990 also said the city has not adequately explained why non-blighted property next to a stretch of Bristol Street, which is slated for widening, is included in the project boundaries.

While the 4th District Court of Appeal agreed early last year that the general project area was blighted, it ordered city officials to resolve those two remaining issues before proceeding with the redevelopment plan.

Santa Ana City Atty. Edward J. Cooper countered Friday that the city has met its obligations, saying there is ample housing in Santa Ana for families who would be forced to move during the 35-year span of the plan. That housing includes homes for sale as well as rentals that accept federal subsidy vouchers, he said.

Superior Court Judge Robert A. Knox listened to both sides and took the matter under advisement. He said he expects to rule within a couple of weeks.

At issue is the city’s $355-million plan to expand Bristol Street from four lanes to six between Memory Lane and Central Avenue, and revamp more than a dozen commercial areas along the strip. The council approved the project in late 1989 after 2 1/2 years of planning, but the lawsuit has ensured that all tax money generated by property in the proposed zone be frozen in an escrow account. In addition, the city has only been able to acquire property from those volunteering to sell.

City officials say they have nevertheless proceeded with plans for the street-widening. Since 1989, the city has spent about $5 million in federal grants to purchase roughly 30 properties along Bristol Street between McFadden and Edinger avenues, and to relocate the displaced residents and businesses, said Robert B. Hoffman, redevelopment and real estate manager for the Community Development Agency.

But those residents and business owners who want to stay in the area have not been able to apply for rehabilitation loans, which would be available if the project had been approved.

The project has been controversial from the start, and required a four-fifths council majority vote for approval after a committee of businesses and residents formed to review the plan overwhelmingly rejected it in 1988. Residents in the area also complained that they had never been informed of the project details in Spanish.

While most residents in the area--parts of which have been plagued by drug-dealing--agreed that the neighborhood should be improved, the fear of displacement quickly took center stage.

Attorney Richard Spix, who represents Robert T. Gonzales, an optometrist with offices in the project area, and Evangelina Avalos, a single mother in the zone, said Friday that the city failed to identify exactly how many families would be displaced by the project.

He said the housing that city officials are pointing to as available is either too expensive for many of the Bristol project-area residents, or substandard. Spix visited and photographed at least six addresses listed by the city as potential replacement housing units that accept federal vouchers, and said he found them roach-infested, with deteriorated sewage systems and other structural problems.

Spix entered his photographs as evidence in the case.

“Throwing (them) out onto the less-than-tender mercies of the Santa Ana housing market really does these hundreds of families a disservice,” he told the judge, asking him to abide by the appellate decision and bring an end to the project. “The city has totally failed to do what the Court of Appeal has requested.”

Spix said he found it ironic that a city plagued by residential overcrowding would point to such an availability of housing. He also said the city should have explained in more detail why the properties off Bristol Street qualify as blighted.

City officials countered that a staff report prepared late last year adequately addresses all of those concerns.

The area off Bristol Street should be included in the project area because overcrowding and high crime qualify the entire neighborhood as blighted, Cooper said. It was included in the project area in order “to keep boundaries uniform,” not solely for the purpose of generating tax revenue for the redevelopment zone, which is against the law, city documents filed with the court said.

“I think our staff has made a very good effort in answering the questions raised by the 4th District Court of Appeal,” Cooper told Knox, adding that redevelopment law ensures no one will be left on the street.

“Before the Redevelopment Agency can move anybody out of a house, it has to have replacement housing for that family,” he said. “That’s what the law says.”

Families would be moved out gradually, over the life-span of the redevelopment project, making it nearly impossible to identify who they will be, or find housing for them now, Hoffman said.

City officials said the project has been held up by legal action possibly longer than any other redevelopment plan in the city’s history. But they vowed to persevere.

“It’s a grind, but I’m not frustrated. We just think it’s part of the process,” Hoffman said. “For every (redevelopment) project the city has adopted, there seems to be some kind of legal challenge. We’ll keep working on it until the court says we’ve got it right.”