Old Neighborhood Feeling the Weight of Eminent Domain

ARCADIA —  The residents and business owners on the northwest corner of 2nd Avenue and Huntington Drive have been a family community for years.

Now, the neighborhood by the Santa Fe railroad tracks is facing extinction.

The buildings lie in the way of the Arcadia Redevelopment Agency’s plans to develop a commercial center west of 2nd Avenue. The agency, which hasn’t decided on a developer yet, has begun acquiring land for the project.

Next month, the agency, which is made up of the five members of the City Council, is expected to approve acquiring a home and a cabinetmaking business by eminent domain. On Tuesday, it also approved the purchase of a nearby lot on Santa Clara Street.

Eminent domain is the power of government to acquire, with compensation, private property for public use. Condemnation refers to the implementation of that right.

The families who own those three properties were among 16 property owners on the western corners of South 2nd Avenue and Huntington Drive were notified last year that the city wanted to buy their lots for redevelopment.

The project, including 1.2 acres on the southwest corner and 3.8 acres on the northwest corner, will “improve the image and viability of the downtown,” said Peter Kinnahan, assistant city manager for economic development. “The area is somewhat blighted.”

The agency expects to spend about $8 million in assembling the five acres, he said. Since December the agency has begun eminent domain proceedings against three other property owners. “It’d be different if there were a real reason, like an important road,” said Margaret Torres, whose home, on an 8,000-square-foot lot on Wheeler Avenue, was one of the two properties approved for acquisition by eminent domain Tuesday. Torres, who is in her early 50s, had rejected the agency’s highest offer of $210,000 for the lot.

“My dad built (the house), my mom used to do the painting. That’s something you just don’t forget,” she said of the single-story white house with yellow trim. She said her father, John Cordova, had feared condemnation ever since the area was designated for redevelopment in 1974.

The 2nd Avenue property of cabinetmaker Eugene Wingard, 76, was condemned Tuesday because he had rejected the agency’s final offer of $265,000 for his 7,500-square-foot lot. Wingard, who has operated out of the beam-ceilinged wood shop since 1948, was asking $800,000 for the property.

“I wish it would all go away,” said Wingard, adding that he hopes he can find another shop near his Arcadia home. “I don’t feel like driving too much anymore.”

John Pais, 82, agreed to sell his Santa Clara Street lot to the agency for $225,000. But his son-in-law Adrian Adrian said Pais would have preferred to stay in the house he had lived in for 50 years. Adrian and his wife live with Pais.

“He’s put a lot of love into this land,” Adrian said. The negotiations “just caused him too much frustration and he doesn’t need that.”

Other neighbors who failed to reach agreements to sell were also bitter about their imminent evictions.

“The thing that’s scaring me is I don’t have the money to buy a new building,” said Robert Willson, whose 2nd Avenue glass-blowing business was condemned Jan. 16. Willson Scientific Glass Inc., which manufactures glass instruments, occupies most of the 5,300-square-foot industrial building on the site. Willson, 62, rents out the rest of the space to two tenants.

The agency’s highest offer is $350,000. “I can’t even touch anything comparable” at that price, said Willson, adding that he has searched as far away as San Dimas.

He said the relocation consultant the agency has hired to find him another place has given him two sites in Monrovia, both in redevelopment zones. “Why jump from one fire to another?” Willson said.

“They’re catching us one at a time,” complained Ray Arvizu, who lives in a three-bedroom home the agency condemned Jan. 2. His 85-year-old mother-in-law, Luisa Franco, owns the 8,000-square-foot property on Santa Clara Street.

“They shouldn’t push old people around,” he said. “These people can’t fight.”

Arvizu runs his landscape contracting business out of a smaller building in the back and rents out a two-bedroom unit on the remainder of the lot.

The city’s highest offer is $200,000, said Arvizu, noting that comparable lots half a block away have sold for twice as much. “I told them to go hang on a rope.”

Some property owners are upset because the agency doesn’t have specific plans for the site. But Kinnahan said the agency had been negotiating with the families since September and “we might as well go on to the next step, because we could get a developer very quickly.”

The city is looking for an industrial or commercial project for the northwest site, and a commercial center for the southwest corner. Two developers, WLA Arcon Inc. of Huntington Beach and Champion Development Co. of Long Beach, have submitted proposals. The agency is seeking more proposals.

Downtown redevelopment has already transformed the blocks on the east side of the intersection, formerly a mix of homes, construction yards and small businesses.

The city started eminent domain proceedings against 12 property owners for that 20.6-acre project in 1986 and 1987, Kinnahan said. In every case, settlement was reached before trial, he said, although the city is fighting a suit by a former business owner who alleges a 40% drop in business after being forced to move to Azusa.

The 132-room Hampton Inn, the 120-room Residence Inn and the Souplantation restaurant are already open on the northeast corner. Plans are under way for three office buildings for the rest of that 11.5-acre site.

On the southeast corner, a four-story office complex and the three-story regional headquarters of the Automobile Club of Southern California were completed last fall. Bennigan’s restaurant, a retail strip and a Cigna Healthcare outpatient facility have also opened in the 9.1-acre development.