The working-class neighborhoods on the north end of Long Beach have long been waiting for what other communities in the sprawling city take for granted: a library, sit-down restaurants, parking spaces, an ice cream parlor.
The contrasts were particularly glaring a decade ago when the city approved construction of gleaming seaside retail and entertainment centers while its commercial corridors eight miles to the north remained blighted stretches of no-tell motels, liquor stores and used-furniture outlets.
By the 1990s, drugs and crime had ravaged parts of North Long Beach. If there was a sign that things had hit rock bottom, it was when the Long Beach Unified School District built a 10-foot-high, 900-foot-long concrete wall to shield a north-side middle school from bullets.
The wall is still there. But there are signs of a revival underway in the diverse community. Since 1996, $193 million has been spent on redevelopment projects in North Long Beach -- about $95 million of that since 2005. In the last two years, two liquor stores, two day-rate motels and an adult movie theater went out of business.
It's probably too soon to call the trend a renaissance, but residents and city officials point to many encouraging signs.
Homes in the roughly 8-square-mile piece of the city bordered by Compton, Paramount, Bellflower and Lakewood come with $500,000 price tags. North Long Beach is also home to the city's newest campus, Dooley Elementary School, near the busy corner of Del Amo and Long Beach boulevards.
An improved economy, tougher code and law enforcement, and community efforts to attract development projects have contributed to a 4% decline in crime each of the last four years.
Less crime has translated into more customers at El Ranchito Mexican Restaurant, a family-operated North Long Beach business that recently hired four more full-time employees and two part-timers.
"We've grown 15% over the past six months because the overall environment is more inviting and comfortable," said co-owner Johnnie Cerda. "We want to buy the auto shop next door to create more parking spaces."
Long Beach City Councilman Val Lerch, a lifelong resident of the community, which was once considered a symbol of the dangers of urban life south of downtown Los Angeles, has a nickname for the 9th District he now represents: "the top of the town."
