Plans for Wilmington Unrealistic, Report Finds

More than two years after consultant Calvin Hamilton outlined his vision for a festive marketplace along the Wilmington waterfront, a new analysis has determined that the community’s economy is too weak to support it.

The report, made public this week, has disappointed some community activists who envisioned upscale specialty shops and trendy cafes moving in to replace the grimy industrial atmosphere at Los Angeles Harbor’s Slip No. 5.

It may also strike an additional blow to the hopes of community leaders who would like to see the former Heinz pet food cannery, recently declared a historic landmark by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, converted into a retail or restaurant development. The project already faces one major hurdle: the opposition of port officials who want to raze the cannery and use the land for an equipment storage yard.

In addition to the bleak economic picture, the report also cites certain physical obstacles to commercial development, including poor access to and from Wilmington and a Department of Water and Power tank farm that bisects the property set aside by the Port of Los Angeles for a possible commercial development.

“It’s very depressing for Wilmington,” neighborhood leader Gertrude Schwab said of the recent market study. “We’re going to have something positive for this community, and we want to draw from other areas, not just from this community. We want something that’s going to be an attraction.”

Nonetheless, the consultants who wrote the report suggested that the port use its property for a more community-oriented project, rather than one that would attempt to attract out-of-town visitors and tourists.

Their list of suggested improvements includes a landscaped park, an observation spot, a water taxi station, a port-related educational center and other uses that port officials say are not “market-driven.”

“It would have been better, I suppose, to get better economic news,” said port planner Nelson Hernandez, who has been overseeing the project. “But what’s most important is to get the best analysis that’s possible and then figure out what you can do.”

Hernandez said the next step in the development process is for the lead consultant, RTKL Associates, to use the findings in its report to draft plans for five or six alternative projects.

At least one longtime community activist, Jo Ann Wysocki, praised the RTKL report as thorough and realistic. “It said what people who have lived in this community for a long time have already known--that we are a low-income community and that Wilmington alone could not support some of the programs that were planned.”

Wysocki has long advocated using the land for a park or a museum--uses that, she has said, the low-income people of Wilmington will be able to enjoy and afford.

But the study has come as a severe disappointment to those who want a more upscale development, and it has prompted harsh criticism from Schwab and another neighborhood leader, Simie Seaman. Both serve on a citizens committee that is helping to plan the project, and both accused port officials of directing RTKL to paint a negative scenario for commercial development so that the port would not lose its industrial land in Wilmington.

The port is paying RTKL $171,800 for the study, although RTKL has subcontracted some of the work to other firms, including the one that conducted the market analysis.

“They’re paying RTKL’s bill, aren’t they?” said Schwab about port officials. “They’re going to call the shots.”

“That is not the case,” responded port Deputy Executive Director Dwayne Lee. “In fact, the primary reason that the port supported the hiring of a consultant was to distance the port staff from the committee process and, in effect, have an objective third party--i.e., the consultant--function in that role to avoid this exact criticism.”

Added consultant Robert Smith of RTKL: “We’re trying to create a realistic plan that can be built, not a fantasy plan based on dreams that can’t be realized.”

Although Smith declined to elaborate, his “fantasy plan” comment was a clear reference to the Hamilton study, which was dubbed “pie-in-the-sky” by some when it was released in December, 1987.

Hamilton, a former city planning director, was hired by the city to draft a far-reaching plan for the revitalization of the entire Wilmington community. His report was a wish list of sorts and included proposals for a theme park on port property in east Wilmington, a revitalized commercial corridor along Avalon Boulevard and a community center and Mexican-style marketplace at the foot of Avalon Boulevard near Slip No. 5 at Los Angeles Harbor.

In an interview this week, Hamilton said he still believes that his plan for the foot of Avalon Boulevard can work, provided that the Department of Water and Power abandons the tank farm. But DWP officials have said they intend to use the tanks for at least another 30 years.

“I think it would work if they make it an attractive and appealing environment,” Hamilton said. “What I recommended was not fantasy. If they’re saying there isn’t an economy for it, they’re not doing what is essential to make it work.”

However, according to the market analysis in the RTKL report, Wilmington’s median household incomes are, at best, between 10% and 20% lower than the statewide and regional levels, and its population base is smaller than typically found in an area of Wilmington’s size.

“This combination of population and income characteristics severely limits the retail expenditures” likely to be generated by residents in the immediate area, the report said.

Moreover, the study found that restaurants in the Wilmington area are achieving sales volumes “far below standard levels.” Even at nearby Ports O’Call Village in San Pedro and Seaport Village in Long Beach, the study said, restaurants are generating between $200 and $215 per square foot, far less than the industry standard of $300 to $350 per square foot for new construction.

The report concluded that industrial development remains the best business opportunity in Wilmington and that a retail/restaurant complex would require significant financial assistance from the city or the port in order for it to succeed.

Port officials have said all along--and reiterated this week--that they are not willing to finance a commercial development in the project area. A spokeswoman for Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the harbor area, said Wednesday that the Flores staff is exploring whether the city might be able to provide financial assistance.

“We’re currently reading the report, and we’re trying to see what options are available to us,” said spokeswoman Karen Constine.