Bradley Cautious in Debate Over Reopening of Liquor Stores

Armed with a petition bearing 35,000 names, a South-Central Los Angeles group urged Mayor Tom Bradley on Saturday to support its crusade and endorse a law to prevent the wholesale rebuilding of about 200 liquor stores destroyed during the riots 3 1/2 months ago.

Although he said he strongly sympathized with them, Bradley told a crowd of 350 people that he could not promise to prevent the reconstruction of many of the stores.

“I commit to reviewing the rebuilding,” Bradley told members of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse and Treatment, a group of African-American and Latino residents in South-Central Los Angeles. “I realize that’s hedging on the word prevent . . . but we’ll take fair and reasonable steps to protect this community.”

The liquor store debate is a sensitive one that pits residents, who blame crime and other neighborhood blight on the high concentrations of liquor stores, against Korean-American immigrant store owners, who have complained that efforts to block their rebuilding efforts are illegal attacks on their property rights.

Bradley’s caution displeased several leaders of the coalition, which met at the Kedran Mental Health Facility auditorium.

Karen Bass, executive director of the Community Coalition, said that because of city laws and procedures the “question is only how the stores will rebuild, not whether they should be allowed to rebuild at all. We want the laws changed.”

Dale Goldsmith, a land-use attorney working for free for the Community Coalition, outlined a reform package to tighten city controls on liquor stores, including new legal tools for preventing nuisance stores from reopening.

Goldsmith, a law partner with former City Atty. Burt Pines, recommended that the city define the meaning of a nuisance store more precisely. The definition is too vague and discourages enforcement, Goldsmith said.