Snag Arises in Plans for Food Store at School

Carefully stitched plans for a cluster of stores that would form the foundation--both literally and figuratively--of Los Angeles’ newest high school began unraveling Tuesday as a nonprofit organization key to the deal bristled at the proposed choice for an anchor grocery store.

Los Angeles Unified School District administrators had promised to bring a major grocery chain to the ground floor of the planned Temple-Beaudry high school, but more recently lowered their sights to a discount food chain.

Furthermore, the nonunion chain with which they have been negotiating--K.V. Mart Co., which operates Top Valu Market and Valu Plus Food Warehouse stores--is the subject of protests across the Southland by the United Commercial Food Workers union for allegedly providing substandard wages and benefits.

Those allegations are vehemently denied by the Carson-based grocery chain, which operates 17 stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties, most of them in poor neighborhoods.

“It’s hogwash,” said Ty Hitt, K.V. Mart vice president. “K.V. Mart pays fair and equitable wages.”

But the union opposition does not sit well with the community development corporation, New Economics for Women, whose involvement is an essential part of an elaborate financing package for the retail portion of the development west of downtown. Although the group’s board will not vote on whether to withdraw its support until next week, director Bea Stotzer said she was “very upset” to learn of the allegations. “If we’re going to be supporting a retail initiative in which the business coming in is not really going to be paying livable wages, we’re defeating our purpose,” Stotzer said.

School board President Jeff Horton also was taken aback by the “troubling” allegations and said he has asked district administrators to look into them.

But Horton said he is not willing to halt the school project, even if it means proceeding without a retail commitment. Current plans call for breaking ground in April.

“If you knew at the beginning what you know at the end, you might do things differently, but you don’t and we didn’t,” he said. This is not the first wrinkle in proposals for building the 3,400-student Belmont Learning Center on vacant land near Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue.

Cost of the high school portion of the project has spiraled from the district’s original estimate of $60 million to at least $81 million, and the adjacent low-income housing project--promised to neighbors--has been reduced from 200 to 120 units.

In addition, the developer, Kajima International, has been embroiled in labor problems of its own, with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Workers Union staging near-daily pickets at its downtown New Otani Hotel.

Kajima won the development competition in part because it reported interest from Vons and Lucky Stores to lease a 50,000-square-foot store. Yet, in the ensuing months, none of the major stores came through and the consultant negotiating for retail stores turned to the discount chain, which is proposing a smaller, 36,000-square-foot store.

District documents indicate that the retail development’s current financing package relies on various funding sources, including the Retail Initiative, an urban investment fund set up by a consortium of banks. But Retail Initiative support requires a nonprofit partner, which was to be New Economics for Women.

School board members who support the project have repeatedly complained that naysayers are out to kill it for selfish reasons. Representatives of an abandoned high school site at the former Ambassador Hotel have been highly critical at public meetings while, behind the scenes, David Koff, senior research analyst for the union picketing the New Otani, has continued to dig for dirt to discredit the project.

It was Koff who researched K.V. Mart’s background and brought the allegations to New Economics for Women. But his motivation, he said, is not the point.

“That has been the constant refrain from them, to go after the messenger and totally ignore the message,” Koff said.

The latest message--imparted by Andrea Zinder, the grocery union research director--is that K.V. Mart preys on poor areas by taking over markets, laying off all employees and offering wages that are 60% of union scale. “They’re expanding rapidly, taking good jobs away from unionized employees,” Zinder said.

In response, Hitt said similar charges were made in a class-action lawsuit the union filed in 1994 on behalf of six former workers, a case that a judge dismissed. Hitt defended the company’s practice of targeting poor neighborhoods, saying they are willing to go where major chains won’t and that the stores create jobs in those areas.