Neighborhood Fights Convenience Store Plan

As children walk to and from Coliseum Elementary School, they must navigate around gangs, drugs and violence on a daily basis.

Their neighborhood is well known to every officer in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southwest Division.

At least 88 stores in a nine-mile radius already have liquor licenses, police say. The last thing area residents need there, officers said, is a 7-Eleven store selling alcohol across the street from where the children go to class. But more than a month ago, the city’s Zoning Commission approved a liquor permit for the store, which would be built on a vacant lot at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Coliseum Street in Southwest Los Angeles.

Police Sgt. Dan Ellerson said granting another liquor license in the area is just asking for trouble.

“It’s a high-crime area,” Ellerson said. “It’s not a good environment for children to grow up in . . . if there’s people loitering and drinking in public across the street.”

Community members say the store is needed,

but they oppose liquor sales so close to the school. A representative of 7-Eleven, however, said that such sales are vital to the store’s success and that the company will drop its construction plans there if a liquor permit is not granted.

The 7-Eleven is envisioned as the anchor store for a small shopping center, similar to one on the site until the 1992 riots.

On behalf of a neighborhood group, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, with the support of the LAPD’s Southwest Division, has appealed the city Zoning Commission’s approval of a liquor permit for the store.

Residents and police vow to fight it out at a Planning Commission meeting scheduled for Dec. 19. A strategy meeting hosted by the Baldwin Village Community in Action was held Wednesday night at Jim Gilliam Park.

Ridley-Thomas said he does not support liquor sales “in an environment where they would be deemed undesirable or contribute to the deterioration of the quality of life.”

The school playground is about 80 feet from where the planned shopping center, including the 7-Eleven, would be built. On the other side of King Boulevard is an area notorious for gang activity and drug sales. On street after street, apartment buildings make up what is called “the Jungle” by local residents. (The area originally got its name at a time when it had lush vegetation.) Residents fighting to improve the neighborhood’s image call it Baldwin Village.

“We have many issues we are fighting here in the community,” said Mary Jones-Darks, president of the community group. She said she pleaded with representatives of the franchise company but to no avail.

“We want you to come, we want you to do well, but the last thing this community needs is a place where you can buy alcohol,” she said she told 7-Eleven representatives. “I just don’t understand why they are pushing so hard.”

A petition with more than 200 names was filed by Zoe Jefferson, principal of the elementary school, with the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Along with that, testimony from police officers will carry significant weight as the agency makes its decision, said Morris Berniard, a supervising investigator with the department.

Berniard said the convenience store meets zoning requirements but “we have protests and some very serious issues. I can tell you right now the department is leaning toward denying this license because of the residents.”

Tom Carmichael, a real estate manager for 7-Eleven Inc., said company officials are intent on providing a safe environment in and around the store and will include a state-of-the-art security system. To discourage loiterers, Carmichael said, there will be no video games inside, and classical music will be played through loudspeakers outside.

He said security guards are not planned for the store, based on experience at other stores. The shopping center, however, may decide to hire its own guards.

Alcohol sales would be limited to between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and between 7 a.m. and midnight Saturdays and Sundays.

Carmichael said that to compete with other markets, the store would have to sell beer and wine. If the license is denied by the state, 7-Eleven will not appeal the decision, Carmichael said. Without a license, the corporation would look for another location, he said, and the planned shopping center might not be built.

The sign for the old shopping center still stands in the empty lot, which is overgrown with weeds and littered with trash. The center was burned down in the aftermath of the 1992 riots, and signs still advertise a pizza place, a beauty salon, a dry cleaner and other stores that no longer exist.

More than 200 liquor stores were damaged or destroyed in the 1992 rioting in South Los Angeles. Since then, about 50 have reopened, said Joseph Devall, program director of the Community Coalition for Substance Prevention and Treatment.

His organization, based in South Los Angeles, tries to prevent the proliferation of liquor stores. “It’s reached the point where it’s far beyond where we would need to add any more [liquor sales], but we would be supportive of productive grocery stores,” Devall said.