Highland Park Comeback May Be Model of Urban Revival

The first promises were made so many years ago that Estilita Grimaldo rolls her eyes at the memory. Now, long after many residents and business owners had given up hope, efforts to revitalize Highland Park’s scuffed and sorry commercial strip on North Figueroa Street are taking root.

The sign above the historic Highland Park theater illuminates the barren street at night. A community newspaper is heading for its third printing. And a business assistance center is now helping cash-strapped entrepreneurs with technical assistance and loans.

A contractor will soon be selected to install more than $600,000 in antique street lighting--six years after residents voted on the project. The brick-and-stone facades of 16 businesses, including the theater, will begin to be restored in July. And the Pasadena Blue Line is due to stop on the strip on its way to Union Station by 2003, carrying a stream of potential customers.

With luck and momentum, residents and business owners hope, the combined efforts will kick-start a revival that could attract needed anchor stores and convince thousands of residents who bypass their own neighborhood for malls in Pasadena and Glendale to shop here.

“We’re due for it,” said Grimaldo, who lives on Figueroa and 53rd streets above the travel agency she sold in 1998 after 26 years of operation. “This community has been forgotten.”

If all goes as planned, Highland Park could at last prove a primer on how to revive a depressed community by concentrating money and attention on one commercial strip. It also provides a detailed map of the obstacles that conspire to keep blighted neighborhoods in a downward spiral.

Grimaldo’s former business--now Luna Tours & Travel--is among the first scheduled for a facade overhaul, and current owner Carmen Mancia is awaiting word on a $12,000 “micro-loan.” A city grant already bought Grimaldo a new roof earlier this year.

“I was on a committee 22 years ago and they promised what we’re getting now,” Grimaldo said. “It’s a total face lift for Highland Park.”

Wedged in the flatlands between Mount Washington and South Pasadena, the neighborhood was one of Los Angeles’ first suburbs. It is home to the Southwest Museum, founded by journalist and ethnographer Charles Lummis in 1907, and to a collection of restored Victorians at Heritage Square.

It is also at the epicenter of the seismic demographic shifts that define Los Angeles. The community today is about three-fourths Latino, with a significant Asian community and pockets of writers, artists and white retirees who chose to stay. The estimated 250 businesses are almost all small and owner-operated.

One of 12 distressed Los Angeles communities receiving $3 million each in revitalization funds under Mayor Richard Riordan’s Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, Highland Park could represent the best chance of success because of its historic attractions, concentration of small businesses and location near a major transportation artery.

Civic and community leaders imagine a thriving commercial strip akin to Huntington Park’s Pacific Avenue, which attracts shoppers from the region. Restore some historic buildings, add cafes, fine dining and a bookstore, and Figueroa Street one day could be packed with strolling families at dusk. Capital flight, grimly labeled “retail leakage” in city-funded planning reports over the years, might at last be reversed.

“It looks like now things are starting to all come together,” said Andrew Barrera, who runs the new business-assistance center for the Valley Economic Development Center, in partnership with the Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment. Just weeks after opening, the center’s list of clients is at two dozen and growing.

In addition to providing micro-loans, the center will help business owners with bookkeeping, marketing and Internet access. Mancia is hoping for financing to rent ticketing machines that will link her directly to the airlines so she can offer better rates.

But problems persist--reminders of the stubborn challenges to community renewal.

Almost all of Figueroa Street’s commercial landlords are absentee. Businesses that cater to the neighborhood’s middle-class shoppers left long ago or downgraded their inventory, making way for a procession of lower-end stores.

“You see more [manicure] shops . . . beeper shops and check-cashing stores,” said Edward Rivera, publisher and editor of the Arroyo Seco Journal, which began publication late last year with city funding.

Some merchants have changed with the times. Family-run Arroyo Furniture has shifted its stock over the last 40 years to less costly merchandise, and is earning more revenue by financing low-income customers. And West Coast Fragrances Inc. does $20 million in yearly sales from its spotless Figueroa Street location, serving wholesale customers outside the area. For the 99-cent stores and discount retailers, however, there is fierce competition for the dollars of the lowest-income residents.

“I am selling at very low prices, making very low profits, but what can I do? It’s for survival,” said Sook Park, who opened the doors of Sunny Fashion last May to sell discount clothes and toys. She has counted 15 nearby stores selling similar merchandise.

Although Highland Park has a resident-run Community Development Corp. and Chamber of Commerce, the groups have suffered from poor participation and have had trouble spearheading efforts for change.

“When we try getting property owners to clean up their area, we can’t find them,” said chamber President Ben Perez. “And the [business owners] say ‘We don’t own the place.’ ”

Still, there are signs of progress. The chamber is working with others in Eagle Rock, Lincoln Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Chinatown, Atwater, Boyle Heights and El Sereno to form the United Northeast Chambers of Commerce, hoping for power in numbers.

And nearly all the improvements--including the newspaper, business-assistance center and facade overhaul--are being funded through the Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, reviving faith in the 4-year-old citywide project.

The Highland Park initiative is being implemented by the Planning Department with help from the offices of Riordan and Councilman Mike Hernandez, who grew up nearby. Hernandez is working to lure a 50,000-square-foot Food4Less and has secured commitments for $5.6 million in funds to spruce up the strip of Figueroa that will border the Blue Line.

“What’s really going to make a difference in Highland Park is . . . the grass-roots organizing that’s going on with the business owners and the business assistance center,” Hernandez said. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard people in many quarters talk about bookstores and coffee shops. The more they talk about it the more chance that it’ll be realized.”

The street lighting was funded by Targeted Neighborhood Initiative’s predecessor, the Local Area Neighborhoods Initiative. Both have relied on residents--principally the Highland Park Community Development Corp.--to decide how the money should be spent.

That organization recently held a merchant sidewalk sale, and is pushing for a Business Improvement District of Figueroa Street property owners to pay for continued improvements. But it has lost board members to burnout and attrition and is without an executive director or president.

“We started from scratch,” said treasurer Jesse Rosas, a founding member and the volunteer group’s de facto head. “We are like babies. We have to learn how to walk and how to talk . . . but we’re trying to be as effective as possible.”

Working with a $400,000 federal grant, professors and students from Occidental College will help organize the Business Improvement District, recruit Chamber of Commerce members and assess the needs of merchants through a door-to-door survey, said Jan Lin, associate professor of sociology and the grant’s principal investigator.

“We want to attract businesses displaced by high rents downtown and in Hollywood,” said Lin, who envisions “the kinds of coffee shops, bookstores and restaurants that lend a community a thematic environment.”

Barrera, of the Business Assistance Center, said new anchor tenants are crucial. Other improvements will come as business counselors help retailers figure out just who their customers are.

“The majority are relying only on walk-in traffic, and that should be just a base,” he said. “In order to attract outside dollars and help this avenue grow into a regional shopping district, we need those anchor businesses.”