Center Seeks to Revitalize Tainted Industrial Lots

The rectangular plot of abandoned land in South-Central Los Angeles has been the source of community frustration for years.

Nestled in the heart of the industrial Alameda Corridor, it was once home to a furniture manufacturing plant that left the ground laced with “hot spots” of chemical contamination. It hardly looks like a target for the kind of job-creating redevelopment projects the community needs.

But the fortunes of the 13-acre site at 41st Street and Long Beach Avenue may have improved Monday with the announcement of a new initiative to revitalize so-called “brownfields” of blighted urban properties.

With $2 million in start-up funds, two nonprofit groups announced the creation of the California Center for Land Recycling. The project will locate “brownfields” suitable for commercial and light industry as well as housing, parks, open space and wildlife habitat, and then find private investors to develop the land.

The center, created by the James Irvine Foundation and the Trust for Public Lands, is billed as the first effort in the state to foster the cleanup and reuse of abandoned industrial areas that traditionally have gone begging for public redevelopment funds.

“The responsible development of ‘brownfields’ is the great land-use challenge facing California and the state,” Irvine foundation President Dennis Collins said at a news conference held at the site. “We are going to provide the staff, research and advocacy to make it happen statewide. We think this will be a workable model that can be picked up around the country.”

The Irvine foundation, which is based in Los Angeles and San Francisco, will contribute the $2 million.

Although initial talks with several large prospective investors--including banks and other lending institutions--have yielded strong support, no deals have been consummated yet, Collins said.

But he said the new center expects to have six to 10 redevelopment projects up and running statewide within two years, despite the skittishness of commercial developers about investing in the inner city.

“Many banks are owners of contaminated properties because of default, so one of the biggest incentives are that these lenders are already in the communities and are quite motivated to see if we can move this to a win/win situation,” he said.

Martin J. Rosen, president of Trust for Public Lands, an environmental protection group, agreed.

“We start with the notion that this is [banks’] hometown and they’ve got to care,” he said. “This is not Bangladesh, this is Los Angeles, and there are tremendous resources here.”

The project backers received moral support Monday from U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Robert E. Rubin, who appeared at the news conference and spoke about the importance of revitalized inner-city neighborhoods to the nation’s economic well-being.

Rubin said that efforts such as those in South-Central Los Angeles would be aided by a $2-billion initiative proposed by President Clinton in this year’s State of the Union address. Clinton wants to create tax incentives that would encourage private companies to clean up and redevelop abandoned industrial sites.

The proposal, recently introduced in Congress, could produce more than $10 billion in private-sector investment to help clean up 30,000 “brownfield” sites nationwide, Rubin said.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is also working to revitalize “brownfields” and recently awarded $125,000 to Los Angeles to staff a “brownfields” coordinator, who will help to identify sites and work with the new center to help promote development projects, said EPA Regional Director Felicia Marcus.

Juanita Tate, executive director of Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles, said she hopes that Monday’s actions will mark a turning point for the 41st Street lot. Her group was born out of a struggle to keep a trash incineration plant from locating there.

Tate said the right redevelopment project could create up to 500 jobs in the community.