WESTSIDE / COVER STORY : RIDING THE ‘UP’ ESCALATOR : The Improving Performance of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza Only Figures to Get Better After a New Theater Complex Opens Next Month.

It stands, appropriately enough, at the heart of the five-mile Crenshaw corridor, a mix of Art Deco and sleekly modern architecture that seems strikingly at odds with the small, mostly mom-and-pop storefronts that surround it.

It is a socioeconomic crossroads where the varied neighborhoods that make up the city’s last predominantly African American district converge: affluent Baldwin Hills, View Park, Windsor Hills, Ladera Heights, Leimert Park and West Adams.

It opened its doors with a flourish in 1947, the West Coast’s first shopping mall proper, and nearly 50 years later, still looms large as a venue for such typically suburban comforts as restaurants, department stores and valet parking.

Today, on the verge of opening a 12-screen movie theater complex that promises a long-awaited boom in foot traffic, the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza is still the area’s most realized hope for the commercial growth that Crenshaw’s middle-class denizens say is long overdue.

With the advent of the theater complex, the modest-sized mall--its 82 stores are anchored by Robinsons May, the Broadway and Sears--may be able to turn a profit for the first time in its history.

“The theaters have the potential of being the turning point,” said Windsor Hills resident Ted Lumpkin, president of the homeowner group Crenshaw Neighbors. “They could put it over the hump.”

Lumpkin’s optimism is guarded, though, and with reason. While most agree that the plaza is progressing, they say it has done so at a snail’s pace. Since the open-air mall modernized and reopened in 1988 as the completely indoor Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, it became an instant, albeit reluctant, symbol of Los Angeles urban renewal.

Under intense political and public scrutiny, the mall fell on hard times. The economy bottomed out into a recession in the early 1990s. Though the 1992 riots left the plaza untouched, Crenshaw and its image were badly scarred. National tenants grew increasingly skittish about locating there, hewing to a popular but unproved notion that large retail outfits such as malls simply had no market in the inner city.

But the plaza has not only survived, it is also on an upswing. Slowly but surely, several national tenants signed on--including the Gap, the Disney Store, T.J. Maxx and See’s Candy--and mall executives promise more are on the way.

Certain chains, such as Sears, have found a loyal client base at the mall, where the outlets consistently boast top sales among their L.A.-area stores. And a first-class movie theater operation, something that put sleepy shopping centers such as Century City on the retail map, is coming June 28.

“You’ll be able to get not just good service, but unbelievable service that’s better than anywhere else in the city,” said ex-basketball superstar Earvin (Magic) Johnson, who teamed up with Sony Pictures to develop the multiplex. It promises top food concessions and plush seating. “I know it’ll go over big. I have no apprehensions at all about this.”

Even those who have doubted the sincerity of the mall’s efforts to attract top-name merchants are seeing a difference.

“I’m finally getting the women from the hills [Baldwin Hills and Windsor Hills], career women,” says business owner Ruby Innis, whose Radiance Boutique stocks elegant, beaded dresses and fantasy wedding gowns. “Even though my [sales] numbers are not exactly where I want them to be, they’re coming up every year.”

Through enormous demographic and political shifts, the Crenshaw area’s economic potential has endured. In the 1930s and ‘40s, it was a collection of all-white bedroom communities far removed from the black neighborhoods east of Main Street.

With the dismantling of restrictive housing covenants and subsequent white flight, it rapidly filled with black families who largely fit the middle-class profile of their predecessors. By the time mall developer Alexander Haagen agreed to renovate and enclose the Crenshaw shopping center in 1986, commercial property in the area had deteriorated while the well-manicured residential property had stayed the same. Residents hoped that Haagen, with his track record of developing shopping centers in urban areas such as Watts, could help put both sectors on an upward swing.

A first glance at the plaza is encouraging--its sculpted facade and skylight-studded interior make it one of the Southland’s more striking indoor malls. But community activist Joe Hubbard says there is still too little at the mall’s core, too few of the high-quality stores that would bring Crenshaw’s well-heeled populace “down from the hills.”

“It’s an insult to have a community so full of potential so constantly ignored,” said Hubbard, president of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, a citizen empowerment organization. In 1986, in the early stages of the mall’s redevelopment, Hubbard and others formed the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Network to act as a community liaison with Haagen.

Enlisting the support of city officials, the network persuaded Lucky supermarket, which had no stores in the inner city, to locate at the mall. The market opened in 1992 and remains one of the highest-grossing Lucky stores in the Southern California region.

Still, said Hubbard, the misperception of African Americans as undiscriminating consumers persists.

“The things that work in the mall, like See’s Candies, are things that have always worked elsewhere,” he said. “You make a mistake when you come in with the idea that a black area is a special project. You have to respect the consumers and treat them as you would anyone else.”

Ladera Heights resident and architect Michael Anderson questions who exactly the mall is targeting. “The mall needed to happen, but it needs to be corrected,” said Anderson, who is pushing to build a five-story office building near the plaza. “The market potential is there, but there are no office buildings, no 9-to-5 activity that drives places like the Third Street Promenade [in Santa Monica]. If [mall developers] really want to create a black Beverly Hills, they have to create the workers.”

Crenshaw’s work force may not be in place, said Haagen Properties Vice President Fred Bruning, but its population density is.

Foot traffic is sparse on most weekday afternoons, but weekends find the plaza stores fairly bustling. Several stores that displayed an initial reluctance to come to the plaza now report above-average sales in Southern California: Foot Locker, Sears, the Disney Store, Wilson’s House of Suede and Leather, Waldenbooks.

“I love the mall. . . . It’s got everything,” said Lumpkin’s wife, Georgia. “I shop at Sears for my grandchildren. I like to people-watch in the food court. It’s become my mall.”

The success of some stores has been a lesson in myth-busting: Bruning said he has encountered misperceptions about the community from store representatives before they opened outlets in the mall. Some have been amazed at the caliber of homes in the district; others had to be convinced that interest in consumer products and merchandise was just as high in this area as in more affluent ones.

The addition of mainstream stores has been good, says mall merchant Eric Wilson, but not yet good enough. “They don’t have what I want here--shoes by Ferragamo and Kenneth Cole, things like that. I see too many orange suits and lime-green shoes, clothes that fit a certain image of black men. This isn’t the Slauson Swap Meet.”

Wilson fought his own image battle last year in opening up his Coffee Beanery kiosk, a franchise that sells gourmet coffee and specialty drinks. “The company just didn’t think people here drank coffee, let alone gourmet coffee,” he said. “It’s been a real struggle, but my sales are actually up 20% this year, even with the theater construction going on and the main entrance door closed.”

Bruning said the mall has come a long way since opening with the three anchors and a smattering of independent stores. Although racist attitudes have been cited for the lack of big tenants, Bruning acknowledges that Haagen officials are also to blame.

“If there’s one big error we made, it was leasing to independent merchants without the national tenants in place,” he said. “When national tenants come, they want to look around and see their peers. If they don’t see them, they run and hide. We gave significant rent breaks to smaller businesses, but that often wasn’t enough.”

Although many small businesses have rapidly come and gone, including Johnson’s Magic 32 sport clothing outlet and the Spike Lee West film product kiosk, Bruning is confident that good times are here to stay. No less than 40 prospective tenants, many of them national, have come to the table on the eve of the theater grand opening, he said.

Over the years, mall sales have gone from a pallid $147 per square foot to $260, which ranks average among Los Angeles-area malls. By spring of 1996, Bruning said, he fully expects to see sales running at $350 per square foot, a figure that would vault the plaza into the top 15% of the Los Angeles metropolitan area’s roughly 80 shopping malls.

“We’ve built up the critical mass now,” Bruning said on a recent walk through the mall, which is currently 82% leased--an average figure among malls. “It’s been a long, tough struggle to become the best mall in L.A. County, but it’s happening. . . . The mall’s success will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the theaters bring people in, they’ll stay.”

Some are not so sure.

Former mall manager Joseph Rouzan III says that while he hopes Bruning is right, he has frequently doubted Haagen’s overall commitment to upgrading the plaza to a quality level residents must see before they change shopping habits.

Rouzan quit his post in February after a year of seeing many of his hopes for mall improvement dashed: an information counter, the return of a courtyard piano player, “things that seem small but are invaluable. . . . Their absence sends a definite message to the community.”

Although efforts to organize and educate merchants about business practices proved successful, Rouzan said he and his small staff were continually overworked and accorded little respect by some members of Haagen Properties management.

He also cited the mall’s refusal to participate in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in January as yet another example of community insensitivity and disregard. Mall officials later said they regretted not participating.

Alexander Haagen III, marketing head and manager of Haagen Properties, said that he and Rouzan simply clashed on management styles; though they both wanted to improve the plaza, he said, they envisioned vastly different ways of going about it.

The Haagen company, he said, is “trying to find the right niches. This isn’t just the African American market, it’s Latino and Asian as well.”

The mall, he added, is focusing on more efficient ways to advertise through cable and other media, “because if you don’t do that, no one will come. The question now is, ‘How do we get the word out?’ ”

A longtime Crenshaw area resident, even Rouzan calls the upcoming movie multiplex the best thing to happen to the area in many years. “But I think it’s got one shot,” he added. “The mall has to make sure it promotes itself and the theaters as best it can. Security is an issue. If people don’t feel safe, they won’t come.”

Security has always been an uneasy question at the mall. There have been few incidents--mall manager Derrell Spann reported no car thefts last year--but many residents nonetheless have expressed wariness about security at the theater, which is expected to draw many more--and younger--patrons.

Even if security is assured, said Spann, “it’s like a Catch-22. People want to be safe, but don’t want to feel like they’re in a police state, either.”

Johnson, however, says he did his community homework thoroughly. He said he sat down with neighborhood gangs and wound up hiring 10 of their members to work on the construction site. At least five, he said, will be permanently hired once the complex opens.

“Of course, we’ll have excellent security. If you don’t have a safe environment, people won’t come,” he said. “But these guys are taking pride in this, helping to build it. That’ll go a long way toward security. Everyone will be welcome here; it’s a family place. Ideally, we’ll all just police ourselves.”

Longtime Crenshaw resident and community activist Valerie Lynne Shaw admits that although she has her doubts about the success of the theaters, she is certain the mall itself will do fine, despite the one-two punch she says the mall has suffered--”racism and the recession.”

“But we’ve had one of the country’s strongest developers on this project,” she said of Haagen. “Without him at the helm, that place would just be a hole in the ground.”