Inner-City Church Takes on Role as a Developer : Housing: Parish unveils its first project, an apartment complex for low-income senior citizens. It plans more nonprofit ventures in South-Central.

Once, the three-acre site was filled with weeds, a carwash and a parking lot.

On Saturday, though, a $10.9-million senior housing project opened its doors.

Ward Villas, a 120-unit development in the West Adams district south of downtown Los Angeles, is the first project of Ward Economic Development Corp. The nonprofit group was created five years ago by Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church to develop low-income housing in South-Central Los Angeles.

More than 300 people turned out for the opening of the project on West Adams Boulevard, including Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, state Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) and Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955.

Parks, who received a standing ovation, congratulated Ward parishioners for their determination to build a low-income project for “those of us who cannot afford the cost of high-priced housing.”

“It seems like you’re not stopping here,” she said. “I hope you will, with God’s help, make your community just what you want it to be in Los Angeles.”

The project, largely developed, built, owned and managed by minorities, could blaze the way for dozens of similar projects in Los Angeles, said Jackie Dupont-Walker, president of Ward Economic Development Corp.

She said other churches are undertaking similar projects in what city officials see as a welcome trend.

“It’s not new for churches to do housing,” Dupont-Walker said. “But it is new for them to set up separate corporations to own housing.”

In the 1950s, church-sponsored projects relied on for-profit developers, she said. Now, churches are eliminating the developers, hiring contractors and organizing the project themselves.

Ward parishioners have waited three years for the project to go from planning to reality. The complex was funded with $2.8 million from a low-interest Community Redevelopment Agency loan, $2.8 million from a conventional loan and $5.3 million from Broad Housing Partners, a private developer.

More than 200 seniors have already signed up to live in the complex--all of them low-income, under federal regulations. Rents will range from $333 to $450 monthly.

The gated complex has 108 one-bedroom and 12 two-bedroom apartments, each equipped with dome lights outside the doors that flash if residents need emergency help. Sun decks, balconies, gazebos, a putting green and an exercise trail are also features of the project that combines high-tech design elements with Victorian-styled touches to blend with the older homes on the street.

For the city, which owns the land, such efforts mean the creation of affordable housing at a time when the region’s building industry is sagging under nearly two years of recession woes and the city Housing Authority has a waiting list of 20,000 people.

Ward EDC already has plans for several other housing projects, is negotiating for ownership of an existing 91-unit building in the neighborhood, and is working on creating a mixed-use commercial and residential development, Dupont-Walker said.

It also has counseled other African-American churches that want to become developers and is forming a coalition with nine other churches to create the Exodus Community Preservation Corp. The new organization would acquire land in South-Central to rehabilitate existing housing stock and preserve it for low-income households.

“The only way you’re going to have a piece of the pie is, you’ve got to bake it yourself,” Ward AME’s pastor, the Rev. Howard Gloyd, told the gathering.

City housing director John McCoy, who attended the ceremony, said 70% of the developers doing business with the city’s redevelopment agency are nonprofit groups, with churches becoming increasingly involved.

A similar nonprofit organization from First African Methodist Episcopal Church developed a smaller housing project on Adams Boulevard and Western Avenue last year and is now working on an 80-unit project and day-care center on 27th Street, he said.

Although construction costs are about the same whether projects are done by a for-profit developer or a nonprofit group, state, federal and local funding is usually easier to obtain by the nonprofit groups, McCoy said. In addition, projects run by such groups are usually much more sensitively designed and managed, he said.

“If a private developer has this piece of land, you wouldn’t get something like this,” he said, gesturing at the three-story complex. “I think it’s gorgeous. Step back and look at it.”

The struggle to build the complex included persuading city officials to allow the inexperienced, church-affiliated nonprofit group to undertake a major project.

“The CRA was astounded,” Dupont-Walker said. “With no experience, you’re supposed to start small, nothing larger than a duplex. But we had the unmitigated gall to come in with 120 units.”