AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : Rising From the Ashes : Crenshaw-Area Leaders Hope Community Can Rebound From Destruction

Though it comprises the largest concentration of affluent African-Americans in the West, the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw area has struggled for decades to get the kinds of goods and services that are standard in white neighborhoods of similar wealth.

But recently the community seemed to be turning a corner. Key businesses were opening. Investment was starting to flow. With new restaurants and music clubs, Crenshaw was gaining some regional recognition as a center for night life and culture.

And now this.

Last week, the Crenshaw district was one the areas hardest hit in the wave of violence that swept Los Angeles after the not guilty verdicts of four police officers in the beating of Rodney G. King.

Scores of businesses were looted, burned or both--including supermarkets, fast food outlets, clothing and video stores, and medical and legal offices. Among the prominent casualties were three Boys Markets, at least three Thrifty drugstores, a Wherehouse records, the Aquarian Bookshop, a Fedco department store and a Footlocker shoe store.

Looters also hit the Broadway store that anchors the $120-million Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, a source of community pride. The new Lucky supermarket, a symbol of the area’s resurgence when it opened last month with great fanfare, escaped damage.

“This has had a devastating impact on this community,” said Joe Gardner, president of the Baldwin Hills Estates Homeowners Assn. “This will lower property values over a period of time until the Crenshaw community’s commercial area is restored.”

The rioters spared many black businesses, whose owners hastily plastered “black-owned” signs on their establishments. Still, black businesses were hit hard. The elegant Jazz Etc. supper club at Santa Barbara Plaza was destroyed. So was the only black-owned Firestone tire store in the nation.

Despite the destruction, Crenshaw area leaders this week voiced hope that their area has a strong chance to turn around quickly because it is anchored in a solidly middle-class community.

“From a business standpoint, the Crenshaw area is very strong and it will have no problem being rebuilt,” said Craig Sasser, executive director of the 200-member Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce. “We have the demographics to make a strong recovery.”

The important thing, he said, is that the community be given an opportunity to participate in the recovery. “Whatever public funds are made available we want to make sure that people inside the community benefit,” he said.

Already there have been encouraging signs from several corporations that had been planning investments in the area.

The Baldwin Theater and the Kansas City-based AMC theater chain are going ahead with a joint venture to open an eight-screen theater complex in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, said Gregory Boyd, a spokesman for Economic Resources Inc., a Lynwood-based nonprofit corporation that owns the Baldwin Theater on La Brea. This theater, the only one in the area, was untouched by the violence.

Fred Bruning, a partner with Alexander Haagen Co., which developed the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, said he, too, sees reason for hope.

“There have to be more stores, more jobs and more black-owned businesses in this trading area,” he said. “People are waking up. This is not 1965 (after the Watts riot) when there was a lot of talk and no action. This time there is an important point to be made.”

Santa Barbara Plaza, across Marlton Avenue from the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, is a sprawling, 23-acre shopping center that is home to about 250 businesses, including clothing stores, hair salons, cleaners, restaurants, pharmacies and offices for lawyers and doctors. The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency wants to refurbish the shopping center, which has the largest concentration of black-owned businesses in the city.

Smith Food and Drug Inc. of Salt Lake City is still considering the shopping center as a potential site for a giant food store, said Rohit Joshi, who represents the chain. “We are looking at three or four locations in the central city,” he said. “We haven’t lost interest.”

The predominantly black Crenshaw area is a mixture of affluent and low-income neighborhoods. Some of the homes along winding roads with panoramic views in Baldwin Hills and View Park are valued at more than $500,000. At the base of these hillside neighborhoods is Baldwin Village, a low-income apartment community which has a history of problems with drugs and gangs.

As more Latinos have moved into South Los Angeles, the Crenshaw area is one of the few remaining communities in the city which has remained predominantly African-American. With its restaurants, shops and clubs, the area has in many ways become the modern-day Central Avenue, which in the 1940s was a hub of African-American cultural activity.

Benita Council, a Santa Barbara Plaza pharmacist, said that while the signs of corporate investment were welcome, the support and patronage of the community is urgently needed for Crenshaw to succeed economically. In the past, Crenshaw merchants have criticized some of the area’s affluent black residents for taking much of their business outside the community to the Westside.

“The middle class is not responding to the needs of this community,” she said, and because of that, “poor people have lost services.”

Since the riots, local businesses have reported a surge in customers, especially at restaurants and neighborhood markets. Even the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza reported an increase in customers.

“So many stores have vanished that there are not a lot of options left,” said Frank Holoman, owner of the popular Blvd. Cafe on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “We have been packed lately.”

And business has never been better at Papa’s Grocery Store, a black-owned market on Vernon Avenue that was untouched by violence. “We certainly can’t complain,” said owner Herb Brown.

Amid the optimism, many people in Crenshaw struggled this week with personal losses and the major inconveniences brought on by the riots.

Many of those hard-hit lined up at Maranatha Community Church, where volunteers gave away food and clothing.

“The people who are going to be hurt the most are the elderly,” said Elsie Kilgore, 67. “The verdict was wrong but we seemed to have only hurt ourselves.”

Not far away, Edward Joseph, 73, struggled to understand why looters had ravaged the little television repair shop he had owned since 1963. “I thought I had wonderful relations with this community,” said Joseph, who is white.

And Anne Johnson, a secretary, stood perplexed in front of the charred remains of her doctor’s office, wondering how to contact him about her appointment.

“This whole thing makes me very angry,” she said. “All my medical records are gone, burnt up.”

All the burning and looting was not right, she said. But neither were the verdicts that sparked it.

“You go to court, you look for justice, but all you get is law,” she said.

Barbara H. Clark, central regional manager of the Los Angeles Public Library, experienced a range of emotions. There was intense anger over the verdicts, followed by the agony of watching a fire nearly destroy a building she and her husband owned for 15 years.

Now that much of the turmoil has subsided, she has settled on trying to understand the hardships many face, particularly those who are less fortunate.

“This area has the ability to rebuild itself,” she said. “The people who live in Windsor Hills have cars to drive to Century City to shop and the Marina to eat, but the people who live in (less affluent areas) can’t do that.”

Hard-Hit Region The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw area is looking ahead to rebuilding after riots destroyed scores of businesses in the community following last week’s not-guilty verdicts against four police officers