The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 355

i J10 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1990 LOS ANGELES TIMES Old Neighborhood Feeling the Weight of Eminent Domain By SIOR-IIIAN TAY KELLEY MIMES STAFF WRITER 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 Fo 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 cminent 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 propertics 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 redevclopment. 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 arca 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 lot on Wheeler Avenue, was one of the two properties approved for acquisition by cminent 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 house), my mom used to do the painting.

That's something you just don't forget." she said of the single-story COLORADO ALVO. DEVELOPMENT COLORADO SANTA CLARA SITES ST. Santa HUNTINGTON Anita DR. ALTA ST. HUNTINGTON PR.

'IS BAY DIAMOND 5 ST. Santa Anta 5TH Golf Course SANTA ISI ONZ DUARTE RD. CAMPUS DR. Los Angeles 'Times 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 square- foot lot. Wingard, who has operated out of the beamwood 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 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 which manufactures glass instruments, occupies most of the 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, KAREN TAPIA Los Angeles Times Property owners and residents Ray Arvizu, Margaret Torres and Dave Cordova, from left, stand near property slated for condemnation. 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 motherLuisa Franco, owns the square -foot property on Santa Clara Street. "They shouldn't push old people around," he said.

"These people can't fight." 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 alrcady transformed the blocks on the cast side of the intersection. The city started eminent domain proccedings 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 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 fourstory office complex and the threestory 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. PAPERS: Inland Daily to Be Formed in Merger Continued from J1 The Daily Report and the Progress Bulletin have been owned since 1967 by Donrey, whose flagship newspaper is the Las Vegas Review -Journal.

Donrey owns 56 daily newspapers, a dozen outdoor advertising companics, five cable television companies and a television station. The two papers have long been moving toward consolidation and adopted identical typography and design formats 18 months ago. They have been sharing editorial staffs and publishing joint editions on Saturdays and Sundays. Caffoc said the Inland Vallcy Daily Bulletin will publish separate Los Angeles and San Bernardino County editions mornings and afternoons. The Daily Report has been published in the morning and the Progress Bullctin in the afternoon.

By adopting a regional name, the combined newspaper will lose some identity that the Progress Bulletin has held with the city of Pomona and that the Daily Report has held with Ontario. Caffoc said Belden Associates, a national readership polling company, interviewed residents of the arca and found that the name of the newspaper did not matter to them. "Readers don't care what it is called as long as what is in it is good," Caffoc said. Pomona Mayor Donna Smith said: "We've known for a long time they were going to merge." She said some residents will regret the loss of a newspaper based in Pomona, but that the Progress Bulletin had been "becoming more of a valley newspaper than a Pomona newspaper" anyway. The Progress Bulletin is in its 106th year of publication.

The Covina City Council Approves Water Rate Cuts -The City Council approved a resolution Tuesday that cuts prices for customers of the city's water division and shifts control of future rate increases from the city manager to the council. The resolution, which eliminates the practice of charging higher rates for consumers at higher elevations, incorporates changes recommended by a citizens committee and approved by the council Jan. 22. The new rates, approved by a 3-0 vote, apply to billing periods beginning on or after Jan. 1.

Mayor Pro Tem Tom O'Leary and Councilman Henry Morgan were absent. The rates were raised in September, but the council- -appointed Ad Hoc Water Rate Committee charged in a report last month that officials were artificially inflating water rates. Officials denied it but said they would go along with reductions urged by the citizens' panel. The old rates, set in September, charged customers from 75 cents to $1.20 per 100 cubic feet of water used, depending on where they lived. The new flat rate is 68 cents per 100 cubic feet.

One hundred cubic feet cquals 750 gallons of water. According to the committee, the change will save the average consumer from $1.31 to $31.98 per -month billing cycle. It will also slice nearly $200,000 off the expected profits of the city's water division this fiscal year. The division's profits for 1988-89 were $510,090. OASIS: Enclave of Bradbury Offers Country Living Continued from J1 With just over 900 residents, Bradbury ranks as one of California's tiniest and most elite citics; one of just a handful that are totally single-family residential.

It has no apartments or condominiums. Neither is there a gas station, a library, a post office or a school. Not even a news rack. And, of course, no traffic lights or sidewalks. "You can't even buy a cup of coffee or a gallon of gas," says City Manager Dolly Vollaire, one of three city employces.

Once, at the turn of the century, Bradbury was the domain of San Gabriel Valley land baron Louis Bradbury. The city's silver jubilee in 1982 featured Champagne at City Hall, a cream -colored stucco building that once was a carctaker's cottage. It's the only public structure in "The City of Rural TALKS: Leaders to Discuss Man's Death by on a narrow, winding asphalt road. The wind carries the distinct scent of horses. Some famous thoroughbreds, including Secretariat, have made Bradbury their home while at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia.

A tax attorney, dressed in riding gear and astride a -groomed mount, bounces by Richards' open car window. They exchange goodmornings. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk circles in a -egg blue sky. From a 360-degree vista, Richards surveys the scene. Canyons of the San Gabriel Mountains give way to inclines and then flatlands.

The scent of chaparral fills the air. "There's downtown. At night it's gorgeous from here: An occan of light." Sunlight glints off the Foothill Freeway traffic. Not everyone who is wealthy wants to live here, he says. "Real Continued from J1 arrest trespassers after issuing a warning, police said.

But Holloway was intoxicated and refused to leave, Goldbaum said. "Nobody could move him off," Goldbaum said, explaining that Holloway was 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 feet, 7 inches tall and the security guards were small men, averaging only 5-foot-6. The guards called the security office for backup. Responding were another guard and the security firm dispatcher, Steve Goldbaum, his son, who is also 6-foot-7, Goldbaum said. "When the dispatcher got there, this guy, 6-foot-7, had our security guard and was trying to push him around," Goldbaum said.

The other two guards were trying to keep order among about 15 spectators. Holloway swung at the guard and the guard took out his baton, Goldbaum said. The dispatcher then stepped in and grabbed Holloway, but Holloway bit the dispatcher on the hand and fled, he said. The five security employees ran through the housing project and caught up with Holloway a block away, off the property at Glorieta Street and Sunset. Avenue.

The dispatcher then took hold of Holloway "around the chin, not around the neck," Goldbaum said. "This was what you call a mutual combat because they were the same size," Goldbaum said. But, he added: "This was a big accident." When the police were summoned, they found Holloway prone on the ground, Pasadena Police Sgt. Monte Yancey said. The officera handcuffed Holloway, carried him toward the police car and noticed he had stopped breathing.

He was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital, where he died two hours later. worked oldbaum said previously his as son a guard had and had received training in the use of a baton and the neck hold. But he was working as a dispatcher because he needed to renew his expired security guard card. Three weeks after Holloway's death, the county coroner's office determined that Holloway died of compression to the neck. Ilis death was listed as a homicide.

His blood alcohol level was determined to have been .17 at the time of his death. The legal limit for drunkenness is .08. The police investigation of the incident revealed that Holloway was hit with a nightstick, sprayed with liquid tear gas and kicked during the struggle with the guards. But Don Eastman, head of the Pasadena district attorney's office, has decided that assault charges will not be filed against the four security guards nor manslaughter charges against the dispatcher. Steve Goldbaum.

fact that wasn't trained hurts the criminal case," Eastman said. "It weakens the criminal case." The lack of current security guard credentials makes it more difficult for prosecutors to prove that criminal or gross negligence was involved, he said. If the dis. patcher had possessed current eredentials, prosecutors could argue that he ignored his training and knowledge of lethal force and killed Holloway, Eastman said. Without credentials, the dispatcher is likened to an average person on the street with limited knowledge about what constitutes lethal force.

he added. Steve Goldbaum has denied that he choked Holloway. Because the legal reasoning was complex, Eastman said, he sent the case to district attorney offices in Los Angeles for review before he issued his final determination Wednesday. The district attorney's action has angered many in Pasadena's black community, who say that Holloway was well -liked and wellknown in Northwest Pasadena. According to Holloway's mother, Georgia Holloway, her son attended Lincoln Elementary School.

Wilson Junior High School, Blair High School and Pasadena City College. John Kennedy, president of the Pasadena branch of the NAACP. said Holloway played on the Blair High School football team as guard and many people expected him to become a professional football player. Holloway was a "big, strong. affable guy who was well- -liked by everyone, kind of humorous." Kennedy said.

Records show that Holloway was convicted and sentenced to state prison in May, 1987, on charges of selling cocaine. He was arrested in April, 1989, on similar charges that were later dropped. But his mother insists that ho was a good son. "There isn't hardly a black American man that doesn't have a record, and give it to them most of the time," she said. Holloway was working part time for the Pasadena Parks and Recre.

ation Department. Shortly before his death, Holloway asked Kennedy for help in securing a better joh, the NAACP president said. "He was an -tempered guy. To get him angry you had to push him very hard," Kennedy said. "He didn't have a violent nature.

He was just a gentle giant." Daily Report was founded 80 years ago. The Daily Bulletin's circulation area will go as far west as Kellogg Hill and include the San Gabriel Valley communities of La Verne, San Dimas, Diamond Bar, Claremont and Pomona. It will extend cast to Fontana and from Mt. Baldy south to the Chino Hills. Circulation of the Daily Report has been slightly ahead of the Progress Bulletin.

Combined, they sell about 90,000 copies daily. Competitors in various parts of the circulation area include the Orange County Register, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the San Bernardino Sun and the Riverside PressEnterprise. 'The Times is the only other daily newspaper that serves the entire circulation arca. The merger was announced in Wednesday's editions of the Daily Report and Progress Bulletin with a joint statement by Caffoc and Don Russell, general manger of the Progress Bulletin. 'They said that "by consolidating forces, we will be able to concentrate on one larger newspaper that will be much improved, better designed and organized." Russell will become general opcrations manager of the Daily Bulletin.

George L. Collier, editor of the Daily Report, will be editor of the combined newspaper. estate people call this a specialty market. It's not the Beverly Hills entertainment kind of community with people trying to oneup cach other." Bradbury consistently ranks among the nation's 10 most expensive suburbs. Much of that can be attributed to zoning that requires large lots.

In one neighborhood, a single-family house must sit on at least five acres. Recent sales have topped $6.5 million. Despite strict zoning, Bradbury has not escaped the tension caused by growth in the Los Angeles arca. The city's population has nearly doubled in 35 ycars. "People aren't at daggers drawn," Richards says, but there's friction.

Richards, a 25-year resident, hopes the rural atmosphere won't change much. Still, "you can't just have all this undeveloped land. stay as coyote PUBLIC AUCTION shown: PUBLIC ANTIQUE WELCOME HORSE la Compliance with California Auction Law The Following Items will be Disposed of for Lawful Money at Public Auction: 680 pieces of jewelry incl. emeralds, diamonds, Rolex, etc. Carousel Horses, Lladro, Furniture, Crystal, Bronzes (220) after Remington, Russell, Moreau, etc.

THIS IS A TOTAL LIQUIDATION SALE VIA PUBLIC AUCTION SUNDAY, FEB. 25 PREVIEW 10:30 A.M. AUCTION 1:00 P.M. INDUSTRY HILLS SHERATON ONE INDUSTRY HILLS CITY OF INDUSTRY CA SI. Lic.

1056-VISA. MC. AE. DISCOVER, CHECKS, CASH LIDO JEWELRY AUCTION (714) 545-9436 Tranquility." The mayor points out the sights: A Frank Lloyd Wright -designed house set like a bunker on a hillside. A luxurious horse -training farm owned by flamboyant evangelist Gene Scott.

A -acre cactus patch. The house where racecar driver Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, were shot to death. (The first and only such incident since the city was incorporated in 1957, the 1988 killings robbed Bradbury of its treasured privacy.) Tasteful signs by driveways say: "Private Lane. Guests and Deliveries Only." Dobermans lounge behind the black iron fences of estates. Later, touring the city by car, Richards passes ancient groves of oranges, thick avocado trees and lush green paddocks ringed by dirt tracks and white, wooden fences.

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