Stalled Crenshaw Plan Leaves Many Puzzled
Every week for five months, Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s business team met with the Community Redevelopment Agency to map out a multimillion-dollar shopping center sorely needed in the Crenshaw district.
Those meetings, the developers believed, were fruitful: The firm even awarded exclusive rights to a Los Angeles real estate company to search for such “big box” retailers as Target or Home Depot to occupy space in the sagging Santa Barbara Plaza.
Suddenly and without warning, the meetings stopped. CRA staff canceled them, rescheduled and canceled again, the developers say. A project the developers believed could be a few weeks away from the City Council began slipping off the city’s radar screen.
It was at about the same time six weeks ago that Johnson, the Los Angeles sports, economic and social hero, announced his support for a plan by superagent-cum-entrepreneur Mike Ovitz to bring a football team to a proposed new stadium in Carson.
But another plan for a National Football League team to return to the Los Angeles Coliseum is being championed by Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district also includes the Santa Barbara Plaza.
Is the slowdown of Santa Barbara Plaza linked to Johnson’s support for a competing football proposal? Is Ridley-Thomas wielding his political power to halt a badly needed shopping center in his district? Or have the developers relied more on star power than on well-crafted redevelopment proposals?
What remains clear is that this development brings together forces from two decidedly different Los Angeles arenas: Los Angeles’ favorite son, Magic Johnson, whose sports skills may only be rivaled by his business sense, and Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is viewed as a tough adversary with ambitious political goals as his guiding light.
Late Tuesday, the developers received a three-page letter from the redevelopment agency outlining the terms under which it could support the project. Those terms, Johnson said in an interview, are “unacceptable.”
If the project falls through, “Mark Ridley-Thomas and the CRA will not answer to me, but to the community that wants first-class services.
“This is not about Magic Johnson or the Johnson Development Corp. This is not about Mark Ridley-Thomas or the CRA. This is about the community. People with their own agendas better realize that.”
The community, Johnson said, deserves all the benefits he can provide with a new shopping center filled with first-rate stores and restaurants. Johnson said he met with the Nordstrom family in Seattle last fall, seeking a Nordstrom Rack as one of the development’s tenants. He added that he believes he has spent about $300,000 in polling the community and conducting the initial planning work on the project.
“I just hope he [Ridley-Thomas] will stay with his commitment to the community,” Johnson said. “If he doesn’t, I hate to see what will happen here.
“I won’t go down easy,” Johnson added. “A lot of people will have to answer for this.”
The plaza is viewed by some as a political football for Ridley-Thomas, who has worked tirelessly for the Coliseum project, lining up support from Mayor Richard Riordan, among others, as well as successfully warding off competitors. So far.
Johnson, the former Lakers superstar and current American Express ad man, has built a solid business reputation in the city with his Magic Johnson Theatres, a mega-movie house in the center of the city’s largest middle-class African American community. (It is across the street from Santa Barbara Plaza, yet another reason the developers believe that the shopping center could attract booming business.) Johnson also recently became Starbucks Coffee’s only domestic joint-venture partner, and plans to open restaurants with TGI Friday’s.
The $80-million Santa Barbara Plaza project, however, has met a stumbling block that has its current tenants and others, including some council members, perplexed.
“Anywhere else and they would roll out the red carpet,” said one source close to the negotiations, who like many people involved in the project declined to be identified publicly. “This is mind-boggling. It’s an absolutely win-win project.”
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A council member put it this way: “If I was running for reelection or some other political office, I would much rather show a redeveloped Santa Barbara Plaza than not. I would be very anxious to solicit investment in that area.”
Johnson has no doubt that he and his associates are “the best group for this project--bar none. This is not some foreign group or some other group from outside. We live there, we go to church there. . . . There’s nobody outside my group that cares more for this community.”
Johnson said he has proven his commitment to the Crenshaw area, first with his movie theaters, which he recently expanded from 12 to 15 screens, and with restaurants and even a bank.
“A lot of people out there don’t walk the walk,” Johnson said. “We’ve talked the talk and walked the walk.”
Ridley-Thomas says he has no conflict with Johnson and he is skeptical of his council colleagues who say they would welcome Johnson’s developers with open arms. The conflict, he says, is with the president of the Johnson Development Corp., Kenneth Lombard.
“It’s a mistake to say this is about the Coliseum. It’s about the merits of Santa Barbara Plaza, a shopping center that’s in sore need of revitalizing,” Ridley-Thomas said. “Unfortunately, Ken Lombard made several blunders which are tough for them to recover from.”
Ridley-Thomas refused to discuss specifics of the project except to say that the CRA did not have anything to recommend to the council. Sources close to the councilman said the developers have created their own delays and that they were asking for a public subsidy that Ridley-Thomas wouldn’t support.
The councilman has asked the developers for a meeting with Johnson, but that has not occurred. Sources said the councilman refused a telephone chat, demanding a face-to-face discussion with the former Lakers point guard.
On Tuesday, Ridley-Thomas proposed in a council motion that the CRA “quickly and successfully” end negotiations with the developers and that the plan include opportunities for the current tenants as well as an interim tenant assistance plan.
Ridley-Thomas said he wants negotiations to end with Johnson’s developers or “an alternate” developer.
CRA administrator John Molloy refused to comment. “It’s a very critical point in the negotiations and I really don’t want to say anything,” he said.
Others, however, said the developers are seeking a $21-million subsidy that would be mostly repaid by sales tax and some property taxes; it would be guaranteed by Johnson’s partnership. Such a financial arrangement is hardly unprecedented; indeed, the council recently approved a $90-million subsidy for a $385-million Hollywood redevelopment project.
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Lombard, who also serves as a city Water and Power commissioner, said he is “absolutely ecstatic” that the councilman “no longer” has a conflict with Johnson, but said that the developers are working hand in hand with Johnson.
“Earvin runs this company. . . . Nothing happens without him,” Lombard said. “The comments he [Ridley-Thomas] is making are directly contrary to every comment and every discussion we’ve had with the CRA prior to these current political issues.
“We are extremely disappointed that the project’s success has been jeopardized by this series of events,” Lombard said. “We hope that both the councilman and the CRA will recognize the importance of this project to the community and go back to their original position of providing the project with the support necessary to make it a reality.”
As one source close to the negotiations put it: “The question is whether this is the Mark Ridley-Thomas Redevelopment Agency or the Community Redevelopment Agency.”
Although Riordan hasn’t seen details of the proposal, Noelia Rodriguez, his spokeswoman, said: “We certainly would applaud a successful economic development venture there. . . . Certainly, any community in the city could use this kind of shot in the arm, especially from someone with a proven track record.”
Meanwhile, the tenants and property owners at the crumbling Santa Barbara Plaza, which sits in the shadow of the Magic Johnson Theatres and the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, say they’ve had enough. Shops are closed and others survive with little foot traffic amid acres of free outdoor parking.
“The bottom line is that the business and property owners can’t stand a delay on this project,” said Sheila Jones, who owns Elegance Plus boutique in the plaza and is the president of the Santa Barbara Plaza Action Committee. “I am not fighting a cause for the Magic Johnson Development Corp. I’m not on their team. I’m fighting a cause of the business owners and property owners who are suffering an economic depression over here.”
