Vernon’s Truck Plan Has Some Firms Fuming

Cargo-hauling big rigs carry the lifeblood for hundreds of businesses in the tiny industrial city of Vernon.

But like clots in an otherwise healthy heart, those 18-wheel behemoths can block the arterial streets vital to the circulation of traffic throughout the region.

It happens when trucks stop oncoming traffic to maneuver--often with three-point turns in the middle of busy streets--to back into narrow driveways. The result: angry stalled motorists, including other truckers, fuming and blaring their horns.

To eliminate such tie-ups, Vernon is imposing a controversial plan that some business owners fear may cost them their properties. Those owners contend that it already has cost Vernon its reputation as the region’s most business-friendly city.

Vernon, a five-square-mile city with 1,250 businesses but only 85 residents, is requiring that all businesses add enough paved space on their properties so big rigs can maneuver into their loading docks without blocking traffic. Officials estimate that half of all businesses do not comply now.

In most cities, such requirements are imposed only on new buildings. But Vernon, a city known for accepting such enterprises as pig slaughterhouses, fertilizer companies and trash recycling centers, is imposing the requirement on all businesses, new and old, by 2009.

Vernon’s efforts come as cities throughout Southern California brace for a dramatic increase in truck traffic generated by the growing stream of Pacific Rim goods shipped into the bustling ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Vernon, home of a massive truck-to-train transfer station and neighbor of similar stations in Commerce and East Los Angeles, is in the direct path of the oncoming truck avalanche.

The amount of maneuvering space required by Vernon’s law increases with the size of the businesses. At the bottom end of the range, buildings with less than 12,000 square feet will need a minimum of 300 square feet for truck maneuvering, in addition to regular parking requirements. The City Council will have the authority to waive the rules under special circumstances.

Some business owners said that the only way to meet the requirement is to demolish parts of their buildings or buy additional land to make room for truck maneuvering.

“They don’t have the right to do this,” said Ernest Warsaw, part owner of Sheffield Furniture Corp., who is not sure that his home furniture manufacturing business meets the requirements. “It’s going to wind up in hundreds of lawsuits.”

Last week, the Vernon Chamber of Commerce, usually a strong ally of the city government, grilled the city’s community development director, Kevin Wilson, about the ordinance. Chamber members pressed Wilson to take aerial photographs of all businesses to determine how many properties will be affected.

The city adopted the ordinance in 1969, giving owners 40 years to comply. But many business owners said they learned of the ordinance only at a recent community meeting. Some property owners said the law is making it hard to either sell their buildings or enter into long-term leases beyond 2009.

Vernon officials insisted that they have given property owners plenty of time to comply. They said that the requirement will eliminate the kind of traffic tie-ups that cost all businesses time and money.

“We have a tremendous circulation problem and we needed to find a fix in our city,” Wilson said.

The biggest trucks now allowed in California are double trailers, 65 feet long, weighing as much as 80 tons.

The size and length of those rigs makes for a squeeze when truckers try to back into older industrial properties that were built for a different generation of vehicles.

That was evident on a recent afternoon when a 45-foot-long big rig loaded with industrial air compressors backed into a business on Santa Fe Avenue, one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.

The young driver, who had only two weeks of experience handling the 18-wheeler, stopped traffic for several minutes while he tried to maneuver into the narrow driveway.

The driver, who identified himself only as Jose, said he waited for traffic on Santa Fe Avenue to clear before trying to back in. Still, several cars idled in the street while he executed what he called the toughest part of his job.

“It’s hard, because you have to keep an eye on what the back of the truck is doing,” he said with a shrug. “When there is lots of traffic, it’s impossible.”

Vernon critics said the truck-maneuvering requirement and a new increase in taxes for warehouses are evidence that Vernon is not living up to the business-friendly ideals with which it was founded 95 years ago, under the motto “Exclusively Industrial.”

James Hilands, a commercial real estate agent who represents several Vernon clients, said the law has already made it difficult to sell nonconforming properties because potential buyers know that buildings must be demolished and rebuilt.

“What is happening there is wrong,” he said.

Hilands listed several properties that he says do not comply with the law and may have to be demolished, including a metal casting firm’s red-brick, 10,500-square-foot building, built in 1950 on an 18,462-square-foot lot on Hampton Street. Delivery trucks there now have to back in from the street.

“I would love to own that building except that it’s in Vernon,” he said.

Other critics said the new warehouse tax is the city’s attempt to discourage the construction of new warehouses because they do not generate as much in tax revenues or utility fees as manufacturers. Factories are exempt from the new tax.

Mike Gagan, a city spokesman, rejected such charges and insisted that the city is still considered very business-friendly.

“Vernon has the lowest energy rates and the lowest water rates in the region,” he said. “It has no business license tax and no gross receipts tax.”

Vernon is a city like no other--a town where most of the voters are city employees who live in city housing. This unique setup gives elected officials and city managers almost unchecked authority. All members of the city’s current council have been in office for at least 20 years.

Mayor Leonis Malburg has been on the council for 44 years.

Wilson acknowledges that at least half of the city’s industrial businesses have yet to meet the requirement.

What will happen to those businesses that fail to meet the 2009 deadline?

Wilson said only that the city will force all businesses to comply--a threat that some business owners fear means that the city will condemn and take over their property.