Inglewood Council Considers Ad Campaign to Promote City as Safe

With business slumping in Inglewood since last month’s civil unrest, the City Council will decide this week whether to spend $50,000 to help pay for an advertising campaign to promote the city as a safe place to visit.

Hollywood Park, where executives say daily attendance and wagering has dropped 10% to 15% since the riots, would contribute another $50,000 to help pay for newspaper ads slated to run the next two weekends.

Businesses throughout the city are suffering, said Chamber of Commerce President Mark Sinaguglia, whose own Mayflower Ballroom has experienced a sharp decline in party bookings.

“Normally, I have tons of wedding and graduation parties in June,” he said, adding that he has only one of each in the coming weeks.

Patronage is off the most at establishments such as restaurants that normally attract customers at night and at those near businesses burned in the rioting. People are reluctant to stop at a business next to one in ashes, Sinaguglia said.

“What I’m really concerned about,” the chamber president said, “are the little mom-and-pop stores that are just hanging on by a thread anyway, because this could do it to them.”

Compounding the effects of the riots, Hollywood Park officials report that racetrack revenues have dropped as much as 35% because of the expanded competition from satellite wagering at other tracks, according to Deputy City Atty. Norman Y. Cravens and Rick Baedeker, the track’s vice president of marketing and public relations.

Anticipating the off-track betting competition, the park recently completed a $20-million renovation and improvement plan in an effort to increase attendance that would offset the expected losses. However, Baedeker said the civil unrest created a “double whammy.”

Cravens said the city expects to lose $300,000 to $400,000 in tax revenues because business is down at the racetrack.

Inglewood’s ad campaign is being proposed by city officials, who asked the track to participate. The council is scheduled to take up the matter at Tuesday night’s meeting.

Two councilmen, Anthony Scardenzan and Daniel Tabor, are expected to be absent Tuesday. Of the remaining three, Garland Hardeman is already saying he plans to oppose spending city money on advertising because it will do nothing to get at the “root causes” of the civil unrest. Councilman Jose Fernandez said he will vote for the ad campaign, and Mayor Edward Vincent was not available for comment.

What people need to see before they will come to the track or anywhere else in Inglewood, Hardeman said Friday, “is us embracing 200 of our youth and giving them jobs and hearing them say, ‘Yeah, we’re off the streets because we have gainful employment.’ ”

Inglewood officials have been trying mightily since the rioting to distance themselves from Los Angeles, pointing out several times that Inglewood’s $10 million in damage was relatively small compared to the more than $700 million reported in Los Angeles County.