REASON #367 WHY MORE OF US ARE MOVING TO THE SUBURBS
The stalled Santa Barbara Plaza development in the heart of Black LA's famed Crenshaw District suggests how badly a project can be bungled when incentives are not in line with goals.
It was supposed to have been a model of urban renewal -- a mix of housing and classy stores to replace a decaying 20-acre shopping center at the foot of the affluent Baldwin Hills. Instead, the once prime location is a collection of blight, dead or dying businesses, and a vast concrete lot with weeds pushing through large cracks. Most of the housing was never built; none of the retailers ever came. The largely middle-class, African American area is stuck with a mostly deserted commercial slum. Southern California leaders gambled on a check-bouncing, politically connected developer to shepherd the project. And after $15 million in government subsidies and more than $30 million in private investment, taxpayers -- and the community -- have lost.
Christopher Hammond, a bespeckled, light-skinned politically connected developer, was able to draw $15 million in public funding for a retail and housing development at the foot of Baldwin Hills that remains an unbuilt eyesore that's left Black Angelenos pissed.Government Pays Hammond 400,000 More Than Appraised Value For Property
Despite a history of questionable credit-worthiness and reliability, bounced checks, and no shortage of lawsuits from unpaid contractors and bill collectors, former city Mayor James K. Hahn and former and current City Council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Bernard C. Parks (locked in a contetious political battle for a ) continued to work with the tall, charismatic African American brotha.
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