Survey Team Shops Around for What’s Right With Crenshaw

Tunletha Hunter is the kind of determined shopper who will ride five different buses to visit a distant suburban mall, or sweet-talk someone into driving her an hour and a half to Orange County to shop at an outlet center.

But this summer, the 18-year-old Crenshaw high school senior was delighted to discover a whole new shopping opportunity in her own backyard.

“Everything I need is right on that little strip,” said Hunter, who lives within walking distance of Crenshaw Boulevard, but had never wanted to shop there before. “It’s right here in our community.”

For the last few weeks, Hunter and several other youths have been taking a good, hard look at the Crenshaw Corridor, documenting the products and services offered by local businesses. They will also be visiting residents to find out their shopping habits and what else they’d like to see in the community.

The information will be posted on a Web site so that more residents like Hunter can find out about neighborhood businesses and, perhaps, shop closer to home. The project, called asset mapping, is spearheaded by the Ward Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization.

“It’s the opposite of needs assessment, which talks about what’s wrong and what’s missing from a community,” said Ward President Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, adding that it “focuses on what is here and what we can build on. It’s to catalog the resources, talents, skills and hidden treasures of the community.”

To gather information, the young people, ages 16 to 23, have been walking Crenshaw Boulevard the last few weeks, from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Pico Boulevard.

Dotted with chain stores and fast food joints alongside mom-and-pop shops and restaurants, the Crenshaw Corridor is a high-traffic thoroughfare that attracts far more cars than shoppers. Hunter said that, before her involvement with the project, she didn’t shop in the district because some areas seemed shabby or dirty.

The youths--who work with an arm of the Ward group called Community Spirit Watch--categorized every business, building and empty lot they saw. They have rated them on their appearance and made a list of all the eyesores that might be keeping shoppers away. They soon realized they were mining a trove.

“I was surprised to find so many black-owned restaurants where you can sit down and get soul food,” said Joavon Smithers, a 22-year-old college student who lives a 10-minute drive away. In the past, she had her African dresses custom made by a seamstress because she didn’t know any stores that sold them. Now, she knows there are boutiques along Crenshaw where she can buy them off the rack.

To prepare for this week’s interviews, the group received training by the Imoyase Group Inc., the organization that has been providing technical support to the project.

They teamed with senior citizens from Ward Villa, a retirement home, to practice interviewing skills. One of the strengths of the project is that it’s intergenerational, harnessing the energy of the young and infusing the wisdom and patience of the elderly, participants said. Most of the funding for the project came from a $70,000 grant from the California Endowment foundation.

Crenshaw residents said they are hoping to replicate the success of other neighborhoods.

Last year, Hyde Park took a similar inventory of its area businesses and asked its residents what they wanted, said Eddie Becton, senior research manager of the Imoyase Group.

“We literally plotted where the liquor stores were, where the banks were,” he said. The findings showed a dearth of banks, medical institutions and major grocery stores in the community, which inspired the community to organize and work toward attracting those new businesses.

As for Hunter, she has already convinced her family to become Crenshaw shoppers, and she can’t wait to begin spreading the word to others. “Why should I go far out when I can stay in the community and get the same quality?” she said.