Pro-Gigante Ruling Eases Ethnic Rift in Anaheim

A day after accusing Anaheim of snubbing its substantial Latino population, community leaders commended the City Council on Wednesday for defusing ethnic tensions by approving a permit for a Mexican grocery store chain.

The liquor license granted Tuesday by council members will allow Gigante, a billion-dollar company with 270 stores in Mexico, to open its first Orange County supermarket--but many of Gigante’s supporters said the another issue was far more important.

At stake, Gigante attorney Richard Denhalter said Wednesday, were U.S.-Mexico business relations. Before the meeting, Gigante officials alleged that a license denial would violate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“It was high time,” Amin David, president of Los Amigos of Orange County, said Wednesday, adding that city officials shouldn’t have taken so long to reach the decision.

After three hours of contentious debate and public testimony, council members agreed that Gigante’s appeal to Latino customers, and the company’s strong Mexican roots, should not be a factor when considering its liquor license application.

The council voted 3 to 1 in favor of Gigante.

Councilman Tom Tait said he was disturbed when he discovered no other supermarket in Anaheim has been denied a liquor license. “Race or ethnicity should obviously not play any part in governmental decisions for land use,” Tait said Wednesday. “I think the right thing happened. It just took a little while longer than it should have.”

Councilwoman Lucille Kring agreed, saying she feared voting against Gigante could set a dangerous precedent--particularly if a store such as Pavilions or Trader Joe’s sought a similar license.

Councilman Frank Feldhaus cast the only dissenting vote, saying the city already has too many stores selling alcohol.

Gigante USA has three stores in Southern California. But in its attempts to expand into Orange County, the business met resistance from Anaheim’s Redevelopment Agency, which found Gigante to be too Latino for Anaheim Plaza, an outdoor mall north of Disneyland. The chain had also been waved away from another location by Mayor Tom Daly, who wanted a store with a greater tax base.

Another stumbling block came in June when the Planning Commission unanimously rejected a liquor license application.

Gigante filed an appeal and mounted a public relations campaign that attracted national media attention. Community activists considered the city’s actions “market racial profiling” and a throwback to days when landlords turned down tenants based on ethnicity.

It didn’t take much to fan the racial flames in Anaheim.

In recent months, Latino and anti-immigration activists have both rallied in front of City Hall over a policy that allows Immigration and Naturalization Service agents to be stationed at the jail.

And many Latino leaders complained to the City Council last year after discovering that the Anaheim police chief had compiled a 36-page report documenting activities of community members, and creating a “family tree” that detailed interconnected relationships among the activists.

Anaheim’s Latino population has grown dramatically. The city is nearly half Latino--up about 15 percentage points from the 1990 census figures. In the census tract where Gigante will open early next year, Latinos make up 60% of the population.

“It’s a city in transition,” said Ron Stockdale, a former Anaheim resident and the leasing agent for the vacant store Gigante plans to occupy.

“This will continue to be an opportunity for the city to embrace the inevitable change in the ethnic balance of the population. You can either embrace it or you can choose to oppose it.”

To Mexican immigrants who live near Anaheim Plaza, Gigante is as common a concept as Wal-Mart. Those who followed the controversy on Spanish-language television said they were not surprised by the city’s opposition.

“Gigante is a great store. We shopped there all the time in Mexico and we can’t wait to get in the doors when it opens here. Of course the city didn’t want it because they don’t want to admit just how many immigrants really live here,” said Mariselas Campos, 33, a mother of two who lives in nearby apartments.

Others are hoping to find jobs at Gigante, which plans to invest $5 million in the Anaheim store and employ 150.

“In Mexico, all of my friends’ mothers love Gigante. They’ll spend all day there,” said Juan Garcia Alaniz, 53, a native of Monterrey, Mexico, who was recently laid off as a store sales manager.

“It would be a great place to work.”

But not everybody is looking forward to Gigante’s arrival.

“I don’t see why we have to have in our city stores that are really not open to people like me,” said Beatrice Wells, 67.

“I really wonder if it will spoil the whole shopping area.”