Arena Backers Should Have Higher Goal

The alley resembles the poorest part of rundown rural America even though it’s in the heart of Los Angeles, a short walk from the gleaming glass-walled Convention Center and the site of the proposed new sports arena.

The slum, and its residents, mostly immigrants from Mexico, have been pretty much left out of the debate over whether the city should contribute up to $70 million for a $200-million-plus arena to the Lakers and Kings basketball and hockey teams.

But you are likely to hear more about this little stretch of L.A. and its residents. For if the arena is to be built, the city and arena promoters are legally obligated to find decent housing for residents of the alley and the surrounding neighborhood.

It’s always been a struggle to make the city and real estate developers live up to their obligation, and there’s no reason this will be any different.

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I visited the alley on 10th Place and nearby streets last week. My guides were Pastors DarEll T. Weist and Ivan Sevillano of the nearby First United Methodist Church and Sister Diane Donohue, who heads the Esperanza Housing Corp., a builder of low-rent housing.

On the left was a two-story flat, built in 1902.

Green and brown paint was daubed over parts of the peeling walls. Plywood had been nailed to the front porch, presumably to prevent falls by the children living inside. Patches of wood had recently been nailed over holes in the wall to keep out rats. Chicken wire covered other parts of the wall, apparently the beginning of a plastering job that had been abandoned. The alley pavement had long disappeared. The rutted roadway and a big tree between this flat and another equally forlorn residence gave the scene its dreary rural look.

Distance, no doubt, has prevented the owners from making repairs. It wasn’t clear from the property records who owns the place. But the addresses on the records were in Pacific Palisades and Brentwood. It’s a long freeway drive to reach the alley from the far and upscale Westside.

Sevillano said the typical family in the neighborhood is five or more, with a substantial number of parents working in the low-wage garment district. But some apartments, he said, have as many as 10 people living in them, with families pooling resources to pay the rent.

The current tenants, however, are not the demographic group being targeted by the owners of the Kings and Lakers.

The arena would be upscale, with 150 luxury boxes and 2,500 expensive club seats among its 20,000 seats. The project would be as much a real estate development as an arena. If plans work out, there would be a hotel, shops, restaurants, movie theaters.

If the proposal is approved by the City Council and Mayor Richard Riordan, work will begin soon. Under the proposal submitted by Kings owner Edward P. Roski, an arena promoter, the city should have the nearby area cleared out by the end of next September. It would be used as a staging area for construction and, eventually, for some of the arena’s 4,500 parking places.

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Pastors Weist and Sevillano and Sister Diane, my tour guides, have no quarrel with the arena, but they want the city to live up to its obligation to provide adequate replacement housing for the slum dwellers. And in the same general area, near the garment district, where so many of the residents work.

The city, the arena developers and the slumlords no doubt will consider these social activists and their followers as obstructionists whose heads are in the clouds.

But actually, their hearts are in the streets, the streets of a neighborhood they know well. Rather than intending to stop the arena project, they want to improve it.

They note that part of the improvement is in place. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has built apartment houses nearby. An art institute and businesses are bringing people into the area. Low-rent replacement housing for the slum dwellers would add to the mix.

It could be one place in town where the rich, poor and middle class aren’t segregated.

Sports fans could have a decent, moderately priced meal beforehand, without being forced to subsist on expensive and mediocre arena fare. They could stop in for a beer after the game. Just like in a real city.