On the Waterfront : Wave of Development in San Pedro Threatens Entrenched Ethnic Community

By SHERYL STOLBERG

June 19, 1988 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The dinner was pure San Pedro: barbecued swordfish smothered in sauce, as the local fishermen prepare it, green beans mixed with mashed potatoes and, of course, the favorite macaroni, mostaccioli. Service was family style.

It was Ladies Night Out at the Yugoslav-American Club, and after dinner the band struck up the seljoncia, a traditional folk dance. Dozens of guests clasped hands and formed a circle, easing into the small kicking steps their people brought from the old country.

But the Zenkich women--three generations of them--missed this dance. Clustered in the ladies’ room, they were engrossed in a conversation about the cost of living in their community.

“Us younger people, we can’t afford it now,” lamented 21-year-old Danielle Carrolle, as her mother, Victoria Zenkich Carrolle, and her mother’s mother, Margaret Zenkich, nodded in agreement. “My sister had to move out of San Pedro just to afford even an apartment.

“I was born and raised in San Pedro and I’m working in San Pedro, so I like being here,” she continued. “I want my children to grow up here, to feel the closeness. But my kids probably won’t be able to feel that.”

Two days earlier, there was a different sort of gathering in San Pedro.

At elegant Nizetich’s restaurant, with its coat-and-tie requirement, crystal chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking bustling Los Angeles Harbor, the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce treated 80 businessmen and developers, most of them from elsewhere in Los Angeles, to lunch.

‘A Jewel Unto Itself’

Guests dined on sole stuffed with crab meat and shrimp, and the white wine flowed, while chamber members extolled the virtues of their town.

“San Pedro has the opportunity to be a jewel unto itself,” declared one excited developer, whose company is about to start construction on a high-rise office building downtown. “People getting in on the ground floor of San Pedro are really getting in on the ground floor of a wonderful opportunity.”

Another businessman was more direct. “Given the type of growth here,” he said, “we’ll all do very well.”

Such contrasts say a lot about San Pedro, long thought by outsiders to be little more than a haven for bars, brothels and bail bondsmen.

The southernmost community in the city of Los Angeles, it is undergoing a rebirth, much like other waterfront areas did a decade ago.

But the renaissance also exposes the attachment San Pedro residents have for their community, and their fears that San Pedro will lose precisely what makes it different: its ethnic spice, its neighborhood spirit and the people who, because no one else thought San Pedro desirable, have happily kept it for themselves.

Generations of immigrants--particularly those from the fishing villages of Italy and Yugoslavia, and Latinos, who now constitute the community’s largest ethnic group--have made their homes in the blue-collar port town.

You don’t find many fern bars in San Pedro. More common are establishments like Utro’s Crest Cafe (“Great Burgers and Cold Beer,” the sign says). In San Pedro, one needn’t look far to find a good Norwegian bakery or a neighborhood grocery where the meatball sandwiches are homemade.

Where else would an airline use a freeway billboard to advertise “The only direct flight to Yugoslavia?”

Roots are important. At public hearings, residents insist that speakers say how long they have lived there, and longevity adds weight to the opinion. One 20-year resident recently apologized for being “a newcomer.”

The tendency is so strong for natives to remain that one-fourth of San Pedro High School’s teachers are graduates, Principal Bruce Rhoades said.

“To find a little school where people want to return, and people do return to work here, I think that’s quite unusual,” Rhoades said.

“I’ve been in the central city, I’ve been in the Valley, I’ve been at junior highs and senior highs and I don’t think you’ll find that,” he said. “They’re born here, they go to school here, they grow old here, they die here and they are buried here.”

Once a city of its own--it was incorporated into Los Angeles 79 years ago because Los Angeles wanted control over the port--San Pedro’s 70,000 or so residents live 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles, a distance that has helped foster a sense of independence.

Essential to San Pedro is its geographic isolation. In Southern California, where people drive through everywhere on their way to anywhere, San Pedro is an oddity: the end of the line.

It is separated by hills from Palos Verdes, by water and the port from Long Beach; it is the last exit off the Harbor Freeway (which locals complain should have been named the San Pedro Freeway). It is a destination, a final stop.

In mind and spirit, San Pedro residents are not Angelenos. They call themselves San Pedrans and their community “Pee-dro.” A Spanish pronunciation brands you an outsider.

Residents still speak quite naturally of “the city of San Pedro.” The local municipal building for Los Angeles government offices is called “San Pedro City Hall.” Even Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the harbor district, gives an annual speech about San Pedro that she calls the “State of the City” address.

Said Anthony DiRocco, who served as chief deputy to Flores’ predecessor, the late John S. Gibson: “We always felt that Los Angeles was someplace else.”

This year, San Pedro is celebrating its centennial--the 100th anniversary of its incorporation as an independent city in 1888.

‘It’s an Incongruity’

Never mind that San Pedro gave up its independence in 1909.

“It’s an incongruity,” acknowledged Bill Olesen, 84, who has lived there for 76 years, “ . . . but it shows the tenacity of the old-timers to retain the name and flavor of the feisty city of San Pedro.”

But San Pedro is changing:

Between 1986 and 1990, private developers and the Port of Los Angeles will spend more than $300 million on commercial projects in San Pedro, including three hotels, two office towers, a 3,000-slip marina and yacht club, a $25-million Fisherman’s Wharf and a new cruise ship center. Much of San Pedro’s once-barren waterfront has already been transformed into a sparkling showcase for maritime recreation.

Since 1980, statistics show, San Pedro’s population has grown more than 14%--almost twice the 8% growth rate in Los Angeles--due largely to condominium and townhouse development along Western Avenue.

The signs of revitalization are coming to downtown San Pedro, which suffered sorely during the 1960s and ‘70s. The Beacon Street area--the notorious strip that during World War II earned San Pedro its reputation as a place where sailors looked for sex and fights--is turning around, 20 years after the city razed it for redevelopment. “The hole,” as locals derisively call the vacant land, will soon be home to a high-rise hotel and office complex.

Along 6th Street, bars, thrift shops and bail bond offices are being replaced--albeit slowly--with trendy cafes and boutiques. Developers have engaged in bidding wars on downtown buildings, and commercial rents have quadrupled in the last three to four years. Colorful flags, a la West Hollywood, hang from street lamps, and construction will begin in July on pedestrian plazas, benches and brick sidewalks downtown.

The 68-year-old Arcade Building on 6th Street, with its beveled glass, wrought-iron rails and brass trim, has been restored. Across the street, the Warner Grand theater--an Art Deco movie palace that some have called a “mini-Wiltern,” after the Wilshire-area theater--has been renovated.

And, in what some see as the ultimate nod of approval, the Los Angeles Conservancy recently sponsored a walking tour to highlight San Pedro’s history.

Property values are escalating as real estate agents and builders discover San Pedro’s hilly coastal land, pleasant weather (air quality officials say the air is among the cleanest in the region) and some magnificent views of the harbor, ocean and Santa Catalina Island. A recent study conducted by a South Bay real estate firm showed that the average sales price of a single-family home for the first half of 1988 was $257,000, 18% higher than in 1987.

“I’ve never seen so much real estate with view property,” said developer Gary Larson, who has been a forceful advocate of preserving San Pedro’s architecture. “I get goose bumps just driving down the streets.”

Yet inevitably, there have been casualties of this real estate boom--people like Donna DiRocco.

More than 100 years ago, DiRocco’s great-grandfather and great-great-uncle moved from the Italian fishing port of Gaeta to San Pedro because its sloping hills and balmy weather reminded them of home. Their descendants have always lived in San Pedro.

But as first-time home buyers on a combined income of $90,000, DiRocco said, she and her husband could afford “only two-bedroom, fixer-upper-type homes that weren’t in good areas of San Pedro.” So they live in Carson, where they own a three-bedroom house with a pool.

Like Danielle Carrolle, DiRocco is torn up about what is happening to her hometown.

“You see a lot of people move in that maybe don’t have the feelings for the community like people that were born and raised here do,” she said.

Tried to Stem Growth

In another sign that land is becoming more valuable in San Pedro, residents are complaining that, as in other Los Angeles County beachfront cities, single-family homes are being torn down to make way for bigger homes or apartment houses.

City officials have tried to stem this growth. Councilwoman Flores is fond of saying that San Pedro was the first community in Los Angeles to “downzone”--to enact an ordinance restricting development throughout the town.

Yet pockets of San Pedro are still ripe for developers. A rash of apartment construction in one section prompted an additional zoning change to preserve what remained of the neighborhood’s single-family character. Another outbreak of apartment construction is occurring downtown along Pacific Avenue, which was San Pedro’s main commercial thoroughfare before mini-malls with off-street parking drew business across town to Western Avenue.

Officials say their offices are flooded with calls from people who want to build apartments in San Pedro.

“I’m getting them, literally, from the East Coast and from San Francisco . . .,” city planner David Kunzman said earlier this year, “and they almost invariably start the conversation by saying, ‘I’ve heard that San Pedro is hot.’ ”

Ad Campaign

Buoyed by all this, the local chamber of commerce is waging an extensive advertising campaign to attract businesses. A slick color booklet promotes the community as “the last of L.A.’s best-kept secrets” and boasts that it “is catching up in a big way, undergoing a renaissance which will forever change the complexion of this unique seaport community.”

The chamber president makes this pledge: “We’re making sure San Pedro is no longer a secret.”

That is exactly what longtime San Pedrans fear.

“We want to keep it quiet,” said Los Angeles Planning Commissioner Sam Botwin, a longtime resident. “We want them to know that San Pedro doesn’t exist.”

Said Flora Baker, president of the local historical society: “People are discovering more and more the benefits of being in San Pedro. We have wonderful weather here, and . . . so many of us are regretting all the advertising the chamber of commerce is trying to do to bring more business to San Pedro. We don’t like it. We would be able to keep our old character if we could keep our secret to ourselves.”

In large part, that character is the result of the port and the fishing industry, which is the reason many immigrants came to San Pedro from Europe and from Japan. (The Japanese community, however, diminished considerably after World War II, when its members were forced into relocation camps and their homes and neighborhoods were claimed by the military for defense purposes.)

Fateful Vote

But the harbor and its booming lumber, cargo and fishing trades also drew the interest of Los Angeles officials and, in 1909, San Pedro residents did something that would forever change both cities: They voted 726 to 227 to give up their independence.

During the campaign for votes, Los Angeles officials argued that the development of San Pedro’s harbor would require more money than San Pedro could afford. In return for control of the port, they promised San Pedro police, schools and other services, including a fish market.

Despite their original sanction, San Pedro residents have long been dissatisfied with the arrangement. In 1940, Vincent Thomas ran--and won--his state Assembly seat with a campaign theme of “I hate Los Angeles.” To this day, locals still feel their lives are being run by strangers.

Many complain that Los Angeles--with an economy that benefits from more than 130,000 jobs generated by the port--has reaped the most from the alliance.

“Los Angeles . . . (has) always treated us like stepchildren,” complained Andy Bonacich, the administrator of the Yugoslav-American Club. “If people could, they would probably secede.”

Residents acknowledge that the port is now so intertwined with Los Angeles--and San Pedro so intertwined with the port--that severing the ties would be impossible.

‘Dubious Blessing’

Yet even a picture book about the history of San Pedro, published by the local historical society, notes politely that the consolidation is “regarded by many as a dubious blessing.”

But the truth may be another matter.

San Pedro has benefited more than any other Los Angeles community from federal block-grant money for commercial revitalization. Since December, 1984, city officials say, San Pedro has been allocated $914,250, more than any other area of the city, with Hollywood second. The program, which helps pay for public improvements in the downtown business district, will receive an additional $2.3 million in the next two years.

As for the Port of Los Angeles, although it is extremely prosperous--profits reached a record $67.2 million last year--what many San Pedro residents don’t realize is state law requires that revenue be put back into port operations, not into Los Angeles city coffers. And where the port can spend money in San Pedro--on projects such as the new Cabrillo Marina or the Fisherman’s Wharf--it has.

Botwin, the city planning commissioner, doubts that life would be any better if the community were independent.

‘Just a Dream’

“It’s just a dream of people, thinking it could be entirely different,” he said. “Let’s say if it was a little independent city, you would have your own city council here, you would have government right at your fingertips. But whether it would be the best for San Pedro, I don’t know.”

Despite its tie to Los Angeles, San Pedro has grown up much as its own city, with the diversity that goes along with an urban center. It has a central downtown, a barrio, modest neighborhoods, luxurious ocean-view homes and its own public beach. Traditionally, those who have lived in San Pedro worked in San Pedro, often at the port or in maritime-related industries.

But like nearly everything else about San Pedro, the employment picture is changing, particularly due to the decline in fishing, canning and shipbuilding.

One of the community’s largest employers, Todd Shipyards, has cut its work force from 5,200 in 1980 to about 1,000 today. Star-Kist Foods and Pan Pacific Canneries, major employers who report that about 80% of their workers live in the harbor area, have eliminated 1,800 and 1,400 jobs, respectively, since 1981, leaving a total of 1,600.

Chamber officials use these statistics to justify their advertising about San Pedro, saying the area needs jobs. While residents worry that the chamber’s campaign will provoke outsiders to buy homes in San Pedro, driving up prices and turning their town into a bedroom community (a dirty term there), chamber officials argue the opposite.

“The chamber’s goal is to accomplish what those old-timers want, to prevent it from becoming a bedroom community,” said Leron Gubler, the organization’s executive director. “What we are trying to do is create that (employment) base once again so people can work here and live here.”

Natural Vacation Spot

In particular, chamber officials envision a mini-San Francisco with white-collar jobs and tourism as the key to San Pedro’s future.

With the shipping activity in the harbor and the upscale waterfront attractions, they say, San Pedro is a natural for vacationers. And with little land available for additional manufacturing plants in San Pedro, they hope white-collar employers can be lured to the new office buildings to hire San Pedro residents and their children, thus cementing a stable future for what has always been a stable community.

But those jobs will come after people such as Danielle Carrolle and Donna DiRocco have been forced out of their community. And, all agree, the high real estate prices are here to stay.

“Those are very valid concerns about keeping it affordable and keeping it so that people have a love of the community,” Gubler acknowledged. “Those are not issues that are easily solved.”

Larson, the developer and preservationist, has his own answer.

“I look at it as a steamroller,” he said. “You can either get in front of it and try to stop it and fail or you can try to control the thing. You’re not going to be able to stop it or totally control it.”

SAN PEDRO AT A GLANCE

Population: 70,000

Median age: 31

Racial, ethnic mix:

White: 59.3 %

Latino: 30.8 %

Black: 4.3 %

Asian-Pacific Islander: 4.3 %

Median years of schooling for adults: 12.5

Median household income: (estimated) $23,000

Average home sale price: (1987) $217,700

Household type: